Japan Radio Co. will release their new AH-J3003S candybar phone [.jpg image], intended for use with DDI Pocket’s Air-H” PHS network, on 15 July. In addition to being loaded with ACCESS’s HTML-supporting Web browser, Compact NetFront, the phone supports up to three POP3 and SMTP email accounts and is SSL-enabled. It also comes equipped with an onboard Mini-B-type USB port for synching data with your home PC.
JCN Newswire, 30 June 2004
Fujitsu Laboratories Ltd. today announced the development of the world’s first technology that embeds 12-digit numerical data (*1) in printed color images in a way invisible to the human eye. This new technology makes it possible to embed data, such as ID codes to convert URLs or telephone numbers, into color images for magazines or advertisements without interfering with the printed design. Utilizing this technology with mobile phones or PDAs enables easy Internet access and phone calling. This technology was developed to provide more natural interfaces using mobile phones or PDAs to customers offering new services such as linking printed images to the Internet.
In a series of subtle and not so subtle remarks that made it clear all is not well at NTT DoCoMo, new president and CEO Masao Nakamura vowed to recover the company’s tarnished record of delivering huge profits. He also said the company would plunge into Asia for global revenue expansion, just like ex-CEO Keiji Tachikawa vowed to do in 2001. Beyond that, Nakamura promised that DoCoMo would put the customer first — but then said he’d put the shareholder first; later, apparently contradicting the propaganda put out by i-mode boss Takeshi Natsuno last week, he said he wasn’t sure how big the market for FeliCa was going to be. But there was plenty of new news broached by Nakamura and he’s set some hard targets in his (somewhat foggy) sights.
U.S. buyout specialist Carlyle Group and Kyocera Corp. are right now announcing details of their purchase of keitai mini and Personal Handy Phone (PHS) operator DDI Pocket from KDDI. Carlyle and Kyocera are expected to snap up a 90 percent stake in DDI Pocket in the $2.1 billion deal. The purchase is sure to give Kyocera, a major PHS phone and base-station maker, a platform to hit the booming China market and gives KDDI a chance to offload the strugging DDI unit (now down to its last 3 million subs) as au concentrates on improving its CDMA 1X EV-DO WIN service against a resurgent DoCoMo. Under the deal announced yesterday, Carlyle will own 60%, Kyocera 10% and KDDI will keep the remaining 10%.
Originally published as a guest column in Fierce Wireless, 9 June – Ed.
If 2001-2003 has been Phase 1 of Japan’s 3G era (all three major carriers launched W-CDMA or CDMA 2000 networks in this period), then 2004 is definitely shaping up to be Phase 2 — and the difference is that now Japan 3G is moving overseas. The assault is being led in part by Japan’s keitai makers who, under NTT DoCoMo’s lash, have invested heavily in sophisticated new terminals and are now looking to markets further afield in order to generate additional ROI.
KDDI has announced “Office Wise”, a new au based service designed to provide an inexpensive mobile and seamless PBX call-service alternative for corporate clients in their local office buildings and plant areas. “Office Wise”, the first service of its kind in the industry, will launch on November 30, 2004, in the Tokyo area, with rapid expansion to the Osaka and Nagoya areas. Office Wise customers use the local area wireless call service by simply installing the required Office Wise equipment at the business site and pre-registering a local area number (up to 11 digits) for use with their au mobile phone units. In addition to calls between registered mobile phones, users can make calls to the extension lines of existing PBX networks by simply adding the “*55” prefix to the extension line number being called.
