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Sony Announces New Clie for Japan

This may be the exception that proves the rule, but Sony shows that the PDA isn’t quite dead yet (at least not in Japan) with their latest, the multimedia PEG-VZ90. The biggest news is that it’s the first Palm with an OLED screen, but besides that it also plays back MPEG-4 video and both ATRAC3 and MP3 audio (hallelujah!), includes 802.11b wireless, and has a CF card slot that will take both communications and memory cards (plus the inevitable Memory Stick slot. According to Sony’s press release (in Japanese) this unit hits the street here at the end of September.

iPAQ's 1xEV-DO SwingPhone

Korean Telecom’s booth at ITU Telecom Asia 2004 is showing off the new HP iPAQ rw6100-series Pocket PC (the “iPAQ SwingPhone”) using the CDMA 1X EV-DO system combined with a wireless LAN 802.11b module. The PDA-style terminal [.jpg image] uses KT’s “NESPOT” service enabling high-speed mobile network connection using the Windows Mobile 2003 OS on the Intel PXA270 520MHZ chip. It boasts 128MB of flash memory over the 64MB of onboard RAM.

DoCoMo to Launch Motorola 3G Phone

According to the Nihon Keizai Shimbun, DoCoMo will offer a new 3G handset made by Motorola in spring 2005. DoCoMo is also (apparently) planning to supply terminals coming from Nokia as well. The article notes that forcast increasing global demand and product improvements by major overseas manufacturers, indicates a competative creep on the traditional domestic handset makers.

Toshiba's New 60GB 1.8-inch HDD Offers World's Highest Capacity

Toshiba Corp. today confirmed its continued innovation and leadership in the fast growing market for 1.8-inch hard-disk drives with the announcement of two new drives. The 60GB “MK6006GAH” achieves the highest capacity yet achieved in this increasingly important HDD format, while the 30GB “MK3006GAL” slims down drive thickness to only 5mm.

Macromedia's Flash Lite Shines

Fujitsu's New VoIP/PHS HandsetFlash has been an integral part of the fixed-line Web for years and with its launch on DoCoMo’s 505i-series 2G handsets in spring 2003 (and on FOMA 3G last fall), it has developed into a mobile Web standard in Japan as well; six major Japanese manufacturers are already producing Flash-enabled handsets. Flash has now rolled out on yet another batch of 3G phones, this time from KDDI. We caught up with Macromedia’s senior director of marketing for mobile, Anup Murarka, at KDDI’s launch event in Tokyo and had a fascinating discussion about the past, present, and future of Flash for wireless. Full Program (also available in Real Player and Quick-Time formats) Run-time 20:51

DoCoMo NOT to Drop i-mode in Japan

UPDATE 2: The Feature has “sort of” come clean, admitting their original story that DoCoMo was going to “drop i-mode” was utter rubbish. Of course, we smelt a rat as soon as the story, written by someone poorly translating a Japanese source, flashed around tech pages, as noted from the text following this update…”This story sounds a little fishy to us, since the reference to a Nikkei Shimbun story came from Total Telecom via Techdirt we’ve done some quick fact checks and seems that perhaps its a translation issue and/or a mis-understanding of terms.”

While it is true that DoCoMo is beginning to push migration of 2G (PDC) users to their 3G (W-CDMA) network, that has nothing to do with the i-mode service itself. Most telling is that NE AsiaBP who run the english side of Nikkei have no mention of what would be perhaps one of the most significant stories coming out of Tokyo this month.

UPDATE FINAL: We asked for clarification from DoCoMo PR and will set the record straight. “There is definitely no plan to end the i-mode brand in Japan,” according to the company’s Masanori Goto Saturday on July 24 at 16:00 JST.