NTT DoCoMo, Inc. and its eight regional subsidiaries today announced the upcoming launch of the new mova 505iS series of five PDC (2G) i-mode mobile phones featuring mega-pixel cameras. Menu icons downloaded from i-mode sites can be saved as preferred icons, one of various ways that the handsets can be highly personalized. The D505iS will be released on October 23, followed consecutive release of the other four models in the near future.
There was some real gold buried in the 2,460 booths and 505 companies that exhibited at the Combined Exhibition of Advanced Technologies (CEATEC) 2003 last week, and a bunch of press releases over the last two weeks have induced us to write a comprehensive tech review of what’s new with mobile technology. At the show we managed to corner the chief designer of Mitsubishi Electric’s next generation keitais (NGKs?) on a new series of very cool modular phones they have developed for next year, Melco looks to have made a conceptual breakthrough with these prototype handsets. Suffice to say we think that series with plug-and-play games console, megapix camera, GPS and other modules that snap onto it’s sleek clamshell design, looks as if they will blow the competition (Sony Ericsson and Samsung versions) out of the water. We also took a ride on the new Sanyo TV-Phone coming out for KDDI and saw a few other goodies like ASIMO and fish feeding with FOMA! We’ll show you all these cool new keitai in action, so be on standby for our video program that’s coming soon. The central message we took from CEATEC was that there are plenty of outstanding innovations coming on stream in the next 18 months that will finally herald the dawn of “ubiquitous” communication. Ahh, ubiquity, the means-anything buzzword that launched a thousand PowerPoint presentations…
KDDI, Okinawa Cellular and Navitime Corporation are pleased to announce that they will launch ‘EZ Navi Walk’ at the end of October 2003. EZ Navi Walk is a full-scale navigation service for pedestrians that makes use of location information from GPS satellites. EZ Navi Walk has been developed from EZ Navi, and allows users to quickly measure the location of a mobile phone through GPS positioning enabling real time continuous display of their location. The service is equipped with voice guidance and other functions that can navigate users to their destinations.
KDDI has announced a contract with Hutchison CAT Wireless Multimedia Ltd., a leading cellular phone carrier in Thailand, for the construction of a high-precision global positioning system (GPS). The contract is based on the gpsOne system which KDDI presently offers in Japan in cooperation with NEC as EZ NAVI, and is worth a total of approximately 1 billion yen. In constructing the new system, KDDI will cooperate with Snap Track, Inc., regarding the gpsOne system license and technological support.
NEC Electronics Corporation today announced that it has developed a new signal processing device (uPD77534) and an RF/IF down converter IC (uPB1009) to enhance Global Positioning System (GPS) functions for cellular phones and other mobile applications. The uPD77534 is an ARM7 TDMI-based System LSI for signal processing, fabricated on 0.15-micron process. As a chipset solution with uPD77534, NEC Electronics has also developed a new RF/IF down converter chip which is connected to the signal processor device and converts the high frequency GPS satellite signal to a low frequency signal used to establish location.
KDDI Corp. and Okinawa Cellular recently announced plans to launch five new handsets from the end of May increasing their new lineup of 3G mobile phones (CDMA 2000 1x), a format that enables high-speed data transmission of up to 144 kbps. All the new phones are Movie Mail-compatible, a function that allows users to shoot and send seamless movies. The new handsets scheduled for launch are the A5401CA manufactured by Casio, the A5402S produced by Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications, the A5306ST and A1303SA both made by Sanyo, and the A5303H II manufactured by Hitachi.
The past couple of weeks saw two lavish events at trendy Tokyo venues hosted by carriers NTT DoCoMo and J-Phone to fete their content provider communities (so, yes, there was a lot of overlap in the guest lists). One attendee at the J-Phone event, held at Zepp in Odaiba, reported that it was a sweaty, raucous evening with content community punters packed in six deep. “There was a lengthy line-up of folks waiting to exchange meishi business cards,” she said, adding that a good time was had, evidently, by all.
But trouble is looming for the battery world. While lithium-ion batteries represent today’s cutting edge, the gadgetry that depends on them is advancing more quickly than the power technology. As mobile devices take on richer features, battery life has become a key issue for gadget developers, and now manufacturers need to go one better than lithium-ion, in both size and energy output.
Morinaga is a great example of the content providers that organize their offerings into more sophisticated “mini platforms” that support sales, marketing, and promotion campaigns for off-line products. In other words, they provide mobile content (images, ring tones, etc.) as part of an overall marketing effort (either for themselves or for clients) – usually combined with PC Web or non-electronic channels.
I’ll be the first to cheer when even one of Japan’s mobile Internet troika offer substantial per-event traffic billing regardless of number of packets. Realistically, this probably won’t happen on the 2G networks (the spike in usage would swamp the systems, yada, yada, yada), so the interesting question is: which 3G network will offer re-event billing the first? And which will subsequently offer flat-rate? Don’t be surprised if it’s KDDI with their CDMA technology.
Update: How about that!
