As predicted, SoftBank Mobile announced their latest handset line-up for the upcoming “sales battle” of the winter 2007 season. The company has new 10 models on offer – 7 coming from Sharp alone – which will begin rolling out by the middle of November through the end of December. They have a dedicated Flash site Here and we’ve posted a few details with images after the jump.
According to the Nikkei, via Reuters, Kyocera and Sanyo are close to inking a deal that would merge the device makers into the world’s seventh largest mobile phone manufacturer. The business daily stated Kyocera aims to buy Sanyo’s mobile phone operations for about 50 billion yen ($435 million), Sanyo expects to sell about 11 million units in the current business year to March 2008, down from its initial estimates of 12.5-12.6 million. Both Kyocera and Sanyo said in separate statements that nothing has been decided.
Obviously it’s been rather quiet on the mobile tech news front here this week. While WWJ could blame that on taking a little R&R at the beach, but the truth is we have been very hard at work to finish our Japan Mobile research report. However, we decided to put together a few quick tidbits that caught our eye this week, after the jump.
Matsushita Electric shares fell to a two-year low after Nokia offered to replace as many as 46 million handset batteries produced by the company on concerns they may overheat. Matsushita, the world’s largest consumer-electronics maker – more widely known as Panasonic – saw it’s shares drop 5 percent on the Tokyo Stock Exchange to 2,015 yen which is the lowest closing price since October 2005.
The LiMo Foundation issued a statement [.PDF] to announce it has experienced a surge in membership as some of world’s most well-known mobile industry players have joined the Foundation during the past six months. Aplix, Celunite, LG Electronics, McAfee and Wind River have joined as Core members and will participate on the foundation board. Additionally, ARM, Broadcom, Ericsson, Innopath, KTF, MontaVista Software and NXP B.V. have joined as Associate members.
IDC released a report earlier this month which identified InnoPath as the strongest MDM (Mobile Device Management) vendor in its ability to gain market share and alignment with market opportunities. Of the top eleven MDM providers, InnoPath was favorably positioned with its ability to leverage market trends, its growth potential, as well as its ability to gain market share.
