Sony Corporation and NTT DoCoMo, Inc. have agreed to form a Joint Venture Company to develop new services based on mobile phones equipped with Sony’s contactless IC Card technology FeliCa(R). The Joint Venture is targeted for establishment in January 2004. Discussions between Sony and DoCoMo will continue to finalize the details of this company which will be named: FeliCa Networks, Inc.
NEC set up a large booth of 200 square meters that is closest to the entrance and exhibited only mobile phones. The demonstration of 3G mobile phones attracted attention from visitors. The company exhibited two models supporting both W-CDMA and GSM that it markets in foreign countries, including Great Britain and Australia.
Sony Corporation introduces a small-size digital tuner module, capable of receiving 1-segment digital terrestrial TV broadcasting signal and digital terrestrial radio broadcasting signal, its sample shipment starting in the beginning of December this year. In order to achieve applications into various mobile products, the industry’s smallest size of approx. 20mm x 16mm x 2mm in external dimension and the industry’s lowest power consumption of less than 150mW have been achieved.
Conventional wisdom teaches that Japan’s mobile industry is at least 18 months in front of Europe (and years ahead of the US). That truism is no more, however, as Europe’s cellular carriers, handset makers, and wireless Internet content providers have sweated blood to catch up – and catch up they have indeed. Daniel Scuka is in Germany this fall where he’s helping WWJpartner
As the march towards rich-media solutions for mobile continues, some partsof the evolution remain a challenge – such as common standards and digitalrights management. But the Java virtual machine offers several advantagesfor the carriers, device manufacturers, content developers and end users. This week’s program digs into the details with Tim Smith, managing director of Hello Network Asia. *Disclosure Note* HNA has been an active technology partner for WWJ since our inception. However we strongly feel that this support should not exempt the company from fair coverage of their recent successful mobile application deployments. Full Program Run-time 17:20
Wireless Watch Japan is back – with a new URL, a new Web site, new staff, anda new service model. We’re ready to go for a 2003 fast proving to be a breakout year for wireless in Japan. WWJ regulars will recall that our last email newsletter and video programwere posted around April 30. Since then, the site’s been in hibernation mode while we rebuilt the backend, upgraded servers, and thought long and hardabout how to place WWJ onto a sustainable, future-oriented footing. And Here We Are!
helloNetwork, the top developer of Java(TM)-based wireless streaming media technology, has partnered with Today Fast East Tone (FET), the third largest mobile carrier in Taiwan, to launch a new range of services which provide multimedia services to FET’s Bravo subscribers. These new services include downloadable movie clips and MTVs for a variety of different GPRS and JAVA enabled handsets.
Yamaha Corporation, the world’s largest manufacturer of musical instruments and a leader in digital audio, announced today that it will expand its “Ringtone@YAMAHA” ringing melody distribution service in China giving customers using CDMA mobile phones of China United Telecommunications Corporation (China Unicom) a vast choice of different melodies for their handset ringers. The service to distribute harmonic 16- and 40-tone ringing melodies nationwide will begin on July 1, 2003, permitting China Unicom CDMA mobile phone subscribers.
NTT DoCoMo, Inc. and its eight subsidiaries announced today that they will launch V-Live(TM) service for videophones beginning May 1, 2003. M-Stage V-Live is a one-to-many video streaming service that enables users to download or stream a variety of live and archived content via 64 Kbps circuit-switched wireless transmission. The new offering will be available for P2101V, P2102V, D2101V, SH2101V, and T2101V FOMA handsets.
Look how traditional chemical photo service providers have realigned themselves to handle digi prints; this is a new and growing line of business. With DoCoMo’s 505-series i-modes phones (due to hit the market early summer), handsets will have very high-quality, mega-pixel-class cameras, so cam-phone users will want to buy more of the services that digi-cam users have already been buying – like kiosk printing. And to those who would cry havoc and let slip the dogs of war I reply: cry freedom – and put a keitai in every back pocket.
