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DoCoMo 3G Cell Phones Model Designer Fashion

DoCoMo 3G Cell Phone Models Designer FashionHey DoCoMo Pimp my handset! NTT is shrugging off some of that infamous group-think mentality promoting trendy young designs in an eye-popping line of custom jackets for the P901iS series. Skulls, pistols, snakeskin, Samba Samurai and flower camo transform mobile phones into Japanese pop culture icons — complete with matching phone straps. D-@-mo (datmo design project) is turning out some of the best P901iS covers, but P901iS manufacturer Panasonic
plus a host of licensees have Japanese strutting down urban catwalks flashing their phones like designer clutches.

The cell phones transformation into fashion statement is something Americans are slowly catching on to. Coach, Hermes and Gucci got it right away and started marketing phone straps, charms or Keitai cases for brand loving locals. Custom painted, and completely illegal, rip offs of Chanel and Dior logos decorate jewel-encrusted handsets on pretty young things but everyone knows real brands are better. Now licensed names by youth culture designers and even game-obsessed Otaku brands are spreading onto handsets like a virus – a shiny, happy moneymaking virus.

KDDI Launching Star Wars Mobile Content for 3G Phones

KDDI Launching Star Wars Mobile Content for 3G Phones

The Force is with KDDI young WWJ Padowans. Japan may be one of the last countries on the planet to see the Revenge of the Sith film, not premiering here until July 9th, but KDDI has contracted where no other Japanese telecom has contracted before (I know, I know, it’s a Star Trek reference but cut me some slack), at least for 3G cell phones.

Starting June 9th, exclusive Star Wars content will be available to subscribers of KDDI’s EZChannel, EZBook and EZ Movie portals for au 3G CDMA 1X WIN cell phones. All six of the Star Wars films stories will be readable with EZBooks; over EZChannel, a talk-through guide on how to better understand this latest edition to the series; while EZMovie will run trailers as a quick fix for those fans who continue to be deprived of actually seeing the film. Star Wars music and Star Wars books will be available for real-world purchase on cell phones from auRecords and auBooks. More fun features include a downloadable Flash screen where Anakin becomes one with the user’s cell phone battery. His light saber flashes from blue to red as your battery power levels sink into the danger zone.

KDDI's Shock and Awe with Tough New Casio 3G Handsets

KDDI's Shock and Awe with Tough New Casio 3G HandsetsCasio’s rugged water-and-shock resistant mobile handsets from KDDI launched at a press event held in the celco’s shiny Harajuku Designing Studio first-floor theater; both features are firsts for a 3G handset and the G’zOne [flash site here] certainly looks like it should be hanging from a REI backpack while its user hammers pylons into a sheer rock face. An optional handle-cum-customized protector curves around the handset’s top edge, just begging for a carabiner clip. The phone has two screens, a 2.2-inch QVGA on the inside and 1-inch circular screen centered in the front cover.

All three models, the C303C, C311CA and C409CA, are covered in a tough polyurethane material with a magnesium alloy body to absorb hard knocks. G’zOne’s front screen functions as an electronic compass orienting with the built-in GPS tracking system and linked to KDDI’s signature EZ Navi walk navigation system, all ready for urban trailblazing. Even if your most arduous climb is the subway steps at Harajuku’s Omote Sando station, that water-resistant function could come in very handy when typhoon season hits. KDDI says the handset can withstand 30 minutes in water at a depth of one meter (although they admit tap water was used in the testing rather than chilly spring snow run-off). Thankfully the launch day event was held inside… 🙂

Index Tuning in for Mobile Digital TV Contracts

Index Tuning in for Mobile Digital TV ContractsIndex Corp., a Japanese company specializing in creating content for mobile phones, is rounding up TV contracts aimed at specialized interactive services linking mobile handsets and television programming. A story in the Nihon Keizai business daily reported the company was on the verge of issuing around 20 billion yen in shares to four other broadcasters including Nippon Television Network, Tokyo Broadcasting System, Fuji Television Network and TV Tokyo. When asked by WWJ, Index would say only that parties concerned were in negotiations and nothing could be confirmed yet. The news, confirmed or not, drove Index shares up 9.5 percent on the JASDAQ on 25 May. Both TV Asahi and Fuji Television already own around 1-2 percent of shares in Index.

The company is currently in partnership with five broadcasters for a remote control application that displays TV listings for the whole country on mobile phones. Launched in March, TeMo Chan is free to download, works with all carriers and also provides access to official mobile sites of TV programmers. Partners are Tokyo Broadcasting, Fuji TV, TV Asahi, Nippon Broadcasting (NTV), TV Tokyo.

Enfour Launches TangoTown in Australia on Telstra i-mode®

Today Enfour announced the official content listing of TangoTown in Australia on Telstra’s new i-mode® service. TangoTown was first released in Japan in May 2002 and this latest release is the fourth time it has been accepted as official content by a major mobile phone carrier around the world. TangoTown, the first fully-featured premium mobile content service specifically services the Japanese language reference, learning and lifestyle needs of students, language enthusiasts, tourists and business travellers.

Hello Kitty V@mp Music Player

Hello Kitty V@mp Music PlayerHere kitty, kitty. The Sanrio Hello Kitty Bearbrick special version Apple iPod is hardly cold on Sanrio store shelves when here comes another audio player full of Hello Kitty’s megabrand of marketable goodness: NHJ’s digital audio player helps cool cats customize a meow mix of music via 256 megas of built-in flash memory boosted by SD memory cards (up to 512 MB). Compared to the iPods mini’s fat, 1,000-song capacity, this is just kibble at a mere 192 songs a shot. But this unit targets those who buy Hello Kitty rice cookers, toaster ovens, computer monitors and tissue box covers, not hard-core mobile audiophiles.