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Red Herring Announces Japan Conference

Red Herring Asia has announced its first technology and business conference for Japan, to be held in Kyoto on July 22-24, 2007, bringing together major technology companies with a vibrant group of entrepreneurs. Speakers will discuss topics along six editorial tracks: Web 2.0, Entertainment, Wireless, Investment, Cleantech and Digital Living / Digital Workplace. Overarching these tracks will be international comparisons and a lively discussion of how Japan became the world’s most innovative country in 2006, according to the World Economic Forum’s Global Competitiveness Index.
[We are planning to attend so drop us a note if you’d like to connect — Eds]

DoCoMo to Display 3G Handset in Milan

DoCoMo announced today that a new 3G FOMA handset developed with award-winning designer Stefano Giovannoni will be globally premiered during Design Week from April 18 to 23 in Milan, Italy. Giovannoni, creator of highly acclaimed designs for world-famous companies such as Alessi, Fiat and Siemens, designed the new handset in collaboration with handset manufacturer NEC Corporation and DoCoMo.

DoCoMo Reports Roaming Glitch

According to this report on Reuters, DoCoMo has said that as many as 240,000 users may not be able to use their phones overseas because of a software glitch. Faulty SIM cards on certain models are apparently preventing connections for messages and voice calls on networks outside Japan. DoCoMo said the glitch and it will replace faulty SIM cards for free.

Sharp Holds Top Handset Market Share

According to a report issued Feb. 28 by IDC Japan, Sharp continued to lead sales in the Japanese handset market, for the third consectutive quarter, with 21.2% share during Q4 2006. The investigation also noted that domestic shipments increased 11.2% year-on-year with 12.9 million handsets sold during the period. Panasonic claimed 11% with NEC, SonyEricsson and Toshiba all coming in close behind at 9 – 10% of sales volume each.

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.