hitachi
hitachi

hitachi

DoCoMo's Fuel Cell for Mobile Devices

The Fuel Cell Development Information Center (FCDIC) recently held a seminar titled “Dawn of the age of fuel cell for mobile devices” with lecturers were invited from leading companies involved in fuel cell development such as NTT DoCoMo, Inc., NEC Corp., Toshiba Corp., Hitachi, Ltd. and Canon Inc. In the lecture, the company mentioned not just the basic performance as a power source for mobile devices but also specific requirements with respect to reliability and safety in actual usage.

Fujitsu Announces Micro Mobile HDD's

Fujitsu has announced their first hard disk drives that use perpendicular magnetic recording (PMR) to deliver enhanced storage capacity. The company unveiled its MHW2 BH-series of 2.5-inch hard disk drives for mobile PCs which will go on sale to the industry in October this year. The two PMR models are the 160GB MHW2160BH, which Fujitsu claims has the industry’s highest storage capacity for a 5,400 rpm HDD, and the 80GB MHW2080BH. The company aims to ship six million units of the two models.

KDDI Launches New Handsets and 3G Services

KDDI - 12 New Handsets with Massive 3G Services LaunchKDDI today launched the first strike in Japan’s mobile number portability wars with no less than 10 press releases announced today at Tokyo’s ultra buttoned-down Imperial Hotel. The line-up of phones and services includes new units from Casio (W43CA), Hitachi (W43H), Kyocera (W43K and W44K), Sanyo (W42SA, W43SA and A5522SA), Sharp (W41SH), Sony Ericsson (W43S) and Toshiba (W45T and W47T), plus a new in-house designer model (also by Toshiba) code named Drape.

The accompanying new data offerings unveiled today include a scrolling news service (ala i-channel) and mobile video conferencing, the first such service from KDDI (which, until now, has philosophically posited that video conferencing was not suited for mobile), as well as several improved mobile music and digital TV offerings.

Software Glitch Hits Casio & Hitachi Handsets

Two mobile phone models sold by KDDI Corp. automatically switch off after sending or receiving certain e-mail characters, the major phone carrier said Monday. The phones are the W42CA model made by Casio Computer Co. and the W42H model made by Hitachi Ltd., which were sold between late June and July. The basic software was developed jointly by Casio and Hitachi.

Hitachi to Boost RFID Business

Hitachi Ltd., Japan’s largest electronics conglomerate, said on Wednesday it plans to launch full-scale wireless tag operations, targeting a 16 percent share of the $3.5 billion domestic market in the next four years. Hitachi, which first developed an IC tag in 2001, has forecast 9.7 trillion yen in consolidated sales in the year to March 2007.

Au Blitz Unveils Seven New Handsets

KDDI has just held a press conference in the New Otani hotel to introduce another seven new handset models for the summer season just as the most recent batch announced earlier this year are now hitting the streets here in Japan. The new hardware on tap includes a Walkman branded model from Sony Ericsson and Casio’s follow-up to last years popular G’zOne water-proof ‘tough phone’ offering. They have also announced another Hitachi handset with the felica mobile wallet chip, a super-slim Kyocera coming in at 18mm thick with a 2.4inch ASV liquid crystal screen (and analog tv tuner), a new Toshiba ‘mass music’ model with bluetooth and 1GB memory on-board plus an additional digital TV tuner enabled unit (with PC site viewer) coming from Sanyo.

Japan Launches Digital TV for Mobile Phones

Japan Launches Digital TV for Mobile PhonesNHK and five commercial TV broadcasters held a splashy launch party in Tokyo’s central Shinjuku train station on Saturday afternoon, announcing the official start of terrestrial ‘One-Seg’ broadcast services. The carriers have lined up accordingly: NTT DoCoMo has partnered with Nippon Television and Fuji Television, while KDDI has forged a partnership with TV Asahi.

The new digital tuner-enabled handsets, coming from Panasonic, Hitachi and Sanyo, should deliver up to three hours of TV viewing time by processing and decoding only the requested channel — as opposed to current analog units which run only about an hour and eat more juice as they decode all incoming broadcast channels. Vodafone’s 905SH from Sharp is rumoured to be available just in time for the World Cup in June.

WWJ has been covering this story since the spring of 2004 when early prototype handsets were first introduced at an NHK open-house event.

Will it be SanyoKia or Nokia-San?

Will it be SanyoKia or Nokia-San? by Mobikyo KKLast week’s announcement of Nokia and Sanyo joining forces to boost their combined CDMA market share in the US was lost in the next-gen mobile TV hype and media avalanche (not to mention complaints about pokey dial-up access from the venue) coming from the 3GSM World Congress. The Nokia-Sanyo combination is an obvious play with both sides bringing a decent value proposition to the table; Nokia has massive manufacturing capacity, established distribution channels and a global brand while Sanyo has proven experience producing ultra-cool high-tech handsets and strong operator/vendor relationships. The companies gave no financial details of the tie-up, which is expected to close in the second quarter, but the JV will be based in Osaka and San Diego with an estimated 3,500 employees.

The challenge — and rewards — of morphing these respective ‘best of’ brands into a unified product offering are significant. Sanyo has advanced mobile battery and GPS chip expertise that even a Nokia would be hard-pressed to build on their own and such technologies are fast becoming key competitive differentiators as the US (and other markets) mandate emergency location reporting and other public safety services. Sanyo was vaulted to the ranks of top-tier suppliers to national champion DoCoMo last year as the name behind some of Big D’s first GPS-enabled models, the SA800i and SA700iS.

A Nokia-Sanyo tie-up makes sense from an economy of scale perspective and the end result should be better hardware for the end user, potentially at a lower price, which should please the operators and — more to the point — their shareholders.

ACCESS NetFront Browser in 11 New Sanyo Handsets

ACCESS Co., Ltd., a global provider of mobile content delivery and Internet access technologies, today announced that its NetFront browser has been deployed in 11 SANYO handset models available in regions throughout the world including the U.S., Canada, Mexico, and New Zealand. Powered by NetFront browser, SANYO handsets represent some of the best-selling devices available from SANYO’s mobile operator partners. NetFront has been selected as the browser technology for 11 SANYO handsets, which include the SCP-8300, SCP-9000, SCP-7500, SCP7400/QW, SCP-4920/QW, SCP-8200/QW, SCP-2300/NZ, SCP-9000/NZ, SCP-2300/CA, SCP-8300/CA, and SANYO MVP models.

KDDI's Competitive Edge in Japan

Over the past 12 to 18 months the mobile division of KDDI, known here as ‘au,’ has been leading the way in Japan’s cellular marketplace. During a recent interview at the 3G World Forum, one European visitor asked the seemingly obvious question, “What is the main reason for their success?” KDDI au's Competitive Edge in Japan by Mobikyo KK

The reasonable answer is that it’s actually a combination of several factors, but one thing stands out. Compared to the NTT DoCoMo and Vodafone business models, au has a very tight focus on the domestic market. Their attention to detail in customer service and product offerings is not challenged by how the product mix and content offerings might fit into the company’s global strategy — and it shows. This has allowed au to take the lead in areas like GPS, flat-rate data and faster networks, all provided to the consumer on affordable price plans. The carrier now offers a full suite of popular and useful services ranging from Navitime, EZ auctions, EZ book, EZ channel, EZ games, and EZ FM to (recently introduced) mobile IM (‘Hello Messenger’), mobile blogging (‘DuoBlog’) and Lismo.

Looking again at au’s recent blitz of cutting-edge models at Designing Studio last week, just in time for Japan’s peak spring sales season, we were truly impressed; it will be a tough choice for shoppers. The phones and services strongly illustrate one of the most fundamental and important learnings about Japan’s mobile success that we’ve been trumpeting for years.