According to Teruo Katsura, Managing Director and Member of the Board of Panasonic Mobile Communications Co. Ltd, (PMC), Panasonic is targeting a1 trillion yen, in sales and 40 million handset production schedule for 2006, and is aiming at an 8% global market share in terms of terminal shipments by 2006. Speaking at a strategic briefing today, Katsura said that PMC wants to boost its sales 250% of its 2003 levels and hit GSM hard in Asia in particular.
In 1973 Martin Cooper, the inventor of the first portable handset, was the first person to make a call on a cell phone (from Motorola to arch-rival Bell.) Now he’s Chairman of ArrayComm, which has developed its iBurst Personal Broadband System based on adaptive array antenna technology. According to the company, iBurst allows mega-bit-per-second cellular bandwidth with much better efficiency than anything extant 3G systems can provide. In today’s exclusive WWJ interview, Cooper argues that 4G is already here; launches broadsides at carriers, engineers, and handset makers who have yet to fulfill the promise of wireless phones; and charges that, after “years of hype,” the industry has failed to deliver on 3G. He also relates his vision for the mobile space: “The Internet will engender thousands of different [mobile] applications.” This interview is a WWJ Classic. Full Program Run-time 17:38
With the latest Telecommunications Carriers Association (TCA) figures in for January, the success of DoCoMo’s new 900i series looks like the best hope for the company to overturn four months of KDDI dominance in picking up subscribers. TCA figures for Jan. 31 2004 indicate that KDDI again proved overwhelmingly popular, with the company picking up 500,100 CDMA 2001x subscribers (against a loss of 268,100 CDMAOne subs) against FOMA’s 132,600 increase and Vodafone’s 11,100 W-CDMA subs.
Nearly the tonic the company needed? Vodafone K.K. is reported to be lauching a new dual mode megapixel camera-bearing 3G handset, the V801SH by Sharp this April. Does that mean the technical issues that stalled rollout last October are sorted? Could be! The .pdf press release from Vodafone is
We guessed right!. DoCoMo’s fantastic FOMA 900i series start rolling into the shops, beginning with the fabulous Fujitsu, on this coming Friday. DoCoMo has just released the info. officially today in the following press release. Also note that we have some great video coverage of the December launch press conference unveiling the 900i handsets coming up later in the month.
KDDI, Japan’s number two wireless carrier, has both been surging ahead of DoCoMo and Vodafone K.K. with its new net adds over the last quarter, and in profits. Last Friday, Jan 30, the company announced that its net profit grew 140.5% to 123.4 billion yen ($1.2 billion) for the quarter ending December 30, 2003 compared to last year.
Vodafone K.K. announced today that after early April it will market the V801SH by Sharp, a new Vodafone Global Standard (VGS) 3G handset compatible with Vodafone live! for use both in Japan and abroad. The V801SH is a dual mode handset capable of operating on Vodafone’s 3GPP-based W-CDMA network in Japan and roaming on GSM networks worldwide.
For some strange reason NTT DoCoMo seems reluctant to sink more cash into loss-making AT&T Wireless – the most grumbled about carrier in the North American market – two years after seeing the value of its $8 billion investment in the “struggling” carrier come to zilch. At least DoCoMo has a footprint in the U.S. market, well one anyway, a demonstration room with a FOMA (Freedom tO Move Away from AT&T?) base station.
Vodafone K.K. announced today it developed the VRM301R remote module (manufactured by JRC, Japan Radio Co., Ltd.), which incorporates mobile handset communication components and functions. Vodafone K.K. will market the remote module to industrial and business machine manufacturers after mid-February 2004. By integrating the VRM301R into their products, manufacturers will be able to add communication features like Sky Mail, Long Mail (including e-mail) and voice in addition to other wireless data communication functions. As a result, manufacturers will be able to develop a wide range of low-cost applications that meet their needs, including ones for remote control and remote monitoring.
KDDI seems to have heard its master’s voice and has just announced that it is following Qualcomm into India. In a separate announcement, KDDI also said it was introducing anti-virus measures into its phones in 2005. KDDI said today, January 19, that it is forming Indo-Fuji Information Technology Pvt. Ltd. with Fujitsu Platform Technologies taking a 12% stake, to provide network construction and spice up international data transmission services for the rapidly exploding Indian market.
