Foreseeing that demand for 3G phones will get on track in Europe and North America this year, sparking competition with rivals in Japan, Samsung and LG are turning up the heat to market their new 3G models to customers in these regions. Mobile phone makers in Japan such as NEC, Panasonic, Sharp and Sanyo, which have concentrated on supplying W-CDMA phones to carriers in Japan, are also reportedly poised to focus more on global markets this year.
Yesterday, NTT DoCoMo announced the 2G N506iS by NEC [.jpg], which the company says is the world’s first mobile phone featuring a flat-panel display that also functions as a speaker. The flat-panel speaker emits sound by sending vibrations throughout the entire display panel. A user can hear the person on the other end by placing an ear anywhere on the panel. DoCoMo says that this makes audiovisual content more vivid than conventional handsets, whose speakers are located on the side of the display.
One of the best things about having a few days off over the holiday season in Tokyo is having time to wander casually through Akihabara and check out the latest gadgets. 2005 is shaping up as a showdown year for music-enabled portable devices and I couldn’t help but notice how DoCoMo’s new 3G handset, the SH901ic by Sharp, really does seem to have at least a slight style similarity to the iPod. As the network speed increases — and with flat-rate packet costs and improved handset technology — critical mass adoption by mainstream users buying even more data seems to be at hand. As competition increases, how will carriers, handset makers and content providers adapt their offerings over the coming year?
While it remains to be seen exactly what kind of applications and services will hit the streets, it has become increasingly clear that a race is on. Having both KDDI and Vodafone launch fixed-line access to content for mobile devices in Q42004 shows, at least in the mid-term, they are ramping up the business model to deliver larger-size files to end users. A little crystal-ball gazing for the coming year — and some very cool Akiba gadget photos — after the jump.
According to the Nikkei, the world’s 26 major mobile phone operators and handset makers have agreed to work on a global standard for a super-fast mobile transmission technology. The group includes NTT DoCoMo and NEC of Japan, Britain’s Vodafone Group PLC, US cell-phone carrier Cingular Wireless, Alcatel of France and Siemens AG of Germany. Super 3G can boost mobile transmission speeds to between 30 and 100 megabits per second to match existing land-line fiber-optic telecom technology.
NEC Corp will launch infrastructure-related operations for China’s 3G cellular phone market, the Nihon Keizai Shimbun reported, without citing sources. NEC is also expanding its cellular handset operation in China, the newspaper said. Shipments of the current generation of cell phones exceeded 1 million units as of Nov 30, exceeding the total for financial 2003, it said. NEC estimates that shipments will reach 2 mln units for the full fiscal year and grow to 3 mln in financial 2005, according to the article.
Toshiba Corporation and NEC Corporation today announced two key advancements toward development of a magnetoresistive random access memory, a technology seen as key to the development of future generations of high performance mobile equipment. Unveiling the latest fruits of a joint development program dating back to 2002, the two companies announced a new cell design that halves power consumption during data writes and cuts writing errors, and a novel MRAM architecture with high speed characteristics and a performance that will support development of high-density devices. Full details of the new technology were presented on December 14 at IEDM (International Electron Devices Meeting) 2004 in San Francisco, USA.
