flash
flash

flash

eMobile Unveils SmartPhone & Flat-rate Price Plan

eMobile Unveils SmartPhone & Flat-rate Price Plan by Mobikyo KKeMobile announced their debut package offering – complete with terminals, data cards and flat-rate HSDPA price plan – today at a Tokyo press conference with company representatives joined by notable industry partners including Paul Jacobs, CEO of Qualcomm, Darren Huston, CEO of Microsoft Japan, and Masafumi Matsumoto, representative director from Sharp. The upstart carrier’s founder, chairman and CEO, Sachio Semmoto (who was co-founder of DDI, which became KDDI), called their newly introduced Sharp EM-One smartphone, “the next-generation mobile broadband device” – which was “designed to deliver always-on broadband at a reasonable monthly flat-rate price.”

The new Sharp terminal is bound to be popular with the same crowd who lined-up to get Willcom’s Zero3 model, also made by Sharp, in late 2005. The EM-One is a touch-screen qwerty-keyboard dual-slider device sporting a 4-inch LCD screen with Japan’s first WVGA (800×480)-resolution screen and Windows Mobile 5.0 (with all the typical office functions). At only 18mm thin, it even comes ready to watch 1Seg digital TV broadcasts and – according to the specs – the unit sports a Marvell PXA270 cpu running at 520MHz with 512MB of Flash memory and 128MB RAM. Perhaps most interesting are the rather agressive price plans, which bundle the device with fixed- and mobile-broadband connection services to attract new customers.

The company also announced four new data cards including a PC Card unit produced by NEC and a USB design coming from Huawei, which will run on the same high-speed network and tabehoudai all-you-can-eat billing model. The new services will be available starting 31 March in five major population areas including Tokyo, Aichi, Osaka and Kyoto. More details after the jump.

Japan Mobile Industry News Mash-up

It’s been a rather hectic few weeks here, as mentioned at the end of our latest WWJ Newsletter, so we thought a chocolate covered bundle of tidbits would be in order today. With 3GSM running this week in Barcelona, on top of the usual post January speed cycle, we’ve clipped over a dozen highlights together for a sweetheart ‘Valentines Eve’ post chalk full of wireless news goodies collected over the last little while, just for you after the jump.

Tegic Communications Launches T9 Discovery Tool

Tegic Communications Launches T9 Discovery ToolTegic Communications has announced the availability of their new T9 Discovery Tool, a software application that will allow consumers to locate or discover content and information, whether on their cellphone or on the mobile web, in just a few keystrokes. Wireless Watch Japan caught up with Tony De Ruvo, director of product marketing, at the recent Marcus Evans 3G Forum here in Tokyo for an advanced preview and chat on-camera about the new product.

Of course, many people in the industry believe that complex menu navigation and portal designs are a major obstacle to accessing content and services, and consider this to be a limiting factor to greater data service uptake and growth. According to the company press release, the T9 Discovery Tool uses unique insights that Tegic has gained from shipping their T9 predictive text entry software in 62 languages on over two billion phones to make mobile search and discovery fast and easy.

The Discovery Tool search interface can be instantly activated from the idle screen, delivering immediate access to menu areas, applications and stored content on the device and to operator content and services held on the network. Improving the speed, discovery, and re-use of operator services, this new tool may help open up new revenue opportunities for carriers by making it dramatically easier for consumers to discover or search for content and services, whether held on or off the operator portal.

DoCoMo Achieves 5Gbps Data Speed

NTT DoCoMo just announced it has achieved a maximum packet transmission rate of approximately 5Gbps in the downlink – claiming a World’s First – using 100MHz frequency bandwidth to a mobile station moving at 10kmh. The field experiment 4G radio access took place in Yokosuka, Kanagawa Prefecture on December 25, 2006. After having achieved a maximum speed of 2.5Gbps in December 2005, DoCoMo doubled the speed in the more recent test by increasing the number of MIMO transmitting and receiving antennas from six to 12 each, and by using proprietary received signal processing technology.

Toshiba Produces 2GB Flash Memory

Toshiba Corp. said on Wednesday it will match rival Samsung Electronics March launch of the industry’s first 2-Gigabyte NAND flash chip by mass-producing a chip with as much storage a month later. Toshiba, which aims to take a combined 40 percent market share with partner SanDisk Corp. by 2008, will begin by shipping samples of its 2-Gigabyte chips in March, using 56-nanometre process technology, and plans monthly shipments of 300,000 chips from April.

Video Report from the Global 3G Forum in Tokyo

Video Report from the Global 3G Forum in TokyoMarcus Evans held their 6th edition of the annual Global 3G Forum from 22nd to 25th January here in Japan “… the most successful test bed for new mobile technologies and products”. Wireless Watch was on-hand, as usual, to meet some of the brightest minds in the business and we caught-up again with well-known telecoms author, consultant and all-round very smart thinker Tomi Ahonen**. Our video interview with him at the 3G Forum last year is Here.

According to Tomi, the big news from 2006 centered on the rest of the world finally breaking away from the panic about 3G, the largest infrastructure investment ever. “In 2005 there was alot of despair and worry about whether 3G would happen.. then in 2006 3G started to roll-out everywhere and countries like Japan and South Korea reached 50% penetration.” The other notable development he mentioned was digital communities and their migration for mobile. He goes on to quote Informa’s recent report which estimated social networking revenues on mobile at $3.5 Billion in 2006.

While it should be no surprise that he predicts mobile commerce will be a major topic in 2007, find out why, and indeed what else he’s expecting in the foreseeable future. Tomi’s a well-tuned voice in the mobile business and we always enjoy spending some time to hear what’s on his mind.. enjoy the show.

We also managed to get Tony DeVuro, Director of Product Marketing, from AOL Mobile on camera for a chat about the new service they will be announcing next month. Stay tuned for that.