Taito Corp, a Japanese game software developer, and Finland’s mobile communications company, Nokia Corp, announced on Aug 28 a plan for joint presentation of a karaoke application to be used on cell phones in Asia. Taito will offer an application using its karaoke data format, “Sequential Display Object Format” (SDOF) for Nokia’s GSM-compatible mobile phone “Nokia 3300.”
No. 1 mobile phone maker Nokia, planning an aggressive push into video gaming, on Tuesday said it has signed a deal to acquire some assets of Japanese game maker Sega Corp. dedicated to networked game play. Nokia will use the SNAP technology for wireless game matching for its N-Gage phone/game deck combo device, set to be released worldwide on Oct. 7.
We spent an afternoon at the Symbian Workshop in Tokyo recently and chatted with Nokia’s Gerard Bruen, Director of Series 60 and Alliance Partners. Tune in for a surprisingly candid discussion about what the big push was for this event.. “the Japanese market is sophisticated, the developers have a good understanding, there is a good eco-system already built around financially stable developers and content owners and we should utilize that.. Nokia has the reach to go global, and to take them global”. A must see interview for wireless developers everywhere who are planning their mobile business strategy.
Boasting camera phones, Japanese mobile phones are rapidly making inroads into the domestic market and secured a two digit market share alerting domestic companies. There are concerns that Korean companies set up strong bulwark as Nokia and Motorola, the no. 1 and no. 2 mobile phone makers in the world, pulled out of the domestic market or secured a paltry 3 ~ 4% outmaneuvered by home-grown major companies such as Samsung Electronics, LG Electronics and Pantech & Curitel.
According to analysts at IDC, our need for handsets seems almost insatiable as far more phones were sold in the second quarter compared to the same period in 2002. The worldwide market for handsets took off in the second quarter of 2003, reflecting continued consumer demand for mobile telephony. According to IDC’s Worldwide Handset QView, worldwide handset shipments grew by 19.2% year-over-year in 2Q03 and increased sequentially by 6.7% to 118.3 million units.
Japan’s wireless broadband networks are rapidly accelerating with the development of cutting-edge technologies and Wireless Japan 2003 is the place to see it all. We’ve put together quite a package from this year’s show, including an on-camera interview with Vodafone Global Content Services’ Tim Harrison on his view on how V-Live is different from i-mode. We grabbed shots of Sanyo’s OLED 3G concept-model handsets and KDDI Labs’ new TV-Mobile unit; and caught up with Gartner Japan’s Mitsuyama-san who gave us her take on this year’s conference. Full Program Run-time 15:35
