Samsung
Samsung

Samsung

Korea Handsets to Compete in Japan

The Korean mobile phone makers are increasing their market shares in the global market. Now, they are trying to show the same growth in the Japanese market. LG Electronics, supplying mobile phones to Docomo, set the target of 700,000 units for this year or double the 2007 sales volume. Pantech Group, supplying its devices to KDDI, is also preparing its new 3G product line to increase their share in the Japanese market. The company hopes to surpass 1 million units, up 20% from last year.

UQ Selects Fujitsu's Mobile WiMAX

Fujitsu has announced that its outdoor base station for mobile WiMAX, BroadOne WX300, was selected by UQ Communications for the company’s nationwide WiMAX services infrastructure in Japan. UQ is jointly owned by KDDI, Intel, JR East, Kyocera, Daiwa and the Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ, and intends to begin offering commercial WiMAX service in Japan starting in 2009 according to the press release issued by Fujitsu.

SoftBank Mobile Unveils Spring Handsets

SoftBank Mobile introduced their latest handset line-up for Spring 2008 at a press conference here in Tokyo on Monday afternoon – video in English – with 15 new models announced. With something for everyone on offer they have followed in DoCoMo’s lead of adopting a wide range of GSM roaming enabled units, 7 in all, along with new designs targeted at everyone from children to seniors including all the standard bells and whistles. Several items worth noting include the – better late than never – introduction of Nokia’s N95 into the Japan market and a collaboration with Tiffany for an exclusive designers model. More details after the jump.

SoftBank Mobile Unveils New Models

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.

KDDI Announces New Handset Models

The fall and winter 2007 handset season is officially upon us now with au announcing their new series of models will hit the dori by middle of November. The latest line-up also claims one ‘world first’ with a co-op between Samsung and Hitachi, on the W53H – Wooo, touting a 2.8 inch QVGA organic EL display targeting users hooked on 1Seg digital-tv. More details with pics and links after the jump.

LiMo Foundation Gaining Membership

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.

InnoPath Named Global MDM Leader

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.

Failure to execute doesn't mean i-mode is dead (yet)

After last week’s O2 and Telstra i-mode cancellation news came out, it took hardly any time at all for the obfuscation and mis-analyses to hit the Web.

Failure to execute doesn't mean that i-mode is dead (yet)

The news, in case you missed it, confirmed that Australia’s Telstra would, and the UK’s O2 most likely would, end their i-mode services; Telstra will terminate i-mode support at the end of this year, while O2 will stop selling new handsets this month and phase the service out over the next two years.

O2 UK was reported to have 260,000 active users, a dozen i-mode-compatible handsets and some 150 sites; O2 Ireland has not stated their subscriber numbers, but the Times said total O2 subscribers were 546,000, implying that Ireland had 286,000 i-moders. Telstra reportedly has fewer than 60,000 subscribers. WWJ members login for the full skinny.

SoftBank Group to Trial Femtocell

SoftBank announced they have received a permit from the Ministry of Public Management, Home Affairs, Posts and Telecommunications to run femtocell trials. The experiment, using 2GHz belt, will be conducted in partnership with ip.access, Motorola, Alcatel Lucent, Ericsson Japan, Samsung, Sonas, Ubiquisys and NEC. Femtocell is a micro cellular phone base station that can be set it up in the home or office and offer mobile handsets voice services via existing fixed-line ADSL connections.