Samsung
Samsung

Samsung

It's Quiet on Tokyo's Mobile Street. Too Quiet.

Checking headlines around the Web yesterday and today, I was struck by the eerie silence on Tokyo’s mobile street. There is a ton of coverage on the Livedoor/Fuji TV take-over battle, but that’s largely a Web/media topic and not really related to mobile. Where’s all the silence coming from? And could it be related to Vodafone, Softbank or flat-rate mobile voice calling? To be sure, we’re not totally lacking mobile news; DoCoMo have posted a couple of releases in the past two weeks, including the 22 February announcement of Mobile FeliCa, see WWJ’s video coverage here and the 8 March notice on the launch of the N700i and P700i 3G FOMA handsets. Similarly, KDDI have some releases up (but only in Japanese; nothing in English since 8 February), notably on their new W31S music-player form-factor celly from Sony Ericsson.

ACCESS NetFront Global Profile Selected for First Motorola i-Mode Handset Deploy

ACCESS announced that its NetFront i-mode Global Profile integrated software solution has been selected by Motorola for deployment in its E378i handset. This innovative handset will initially be offered by leading Spanish mobile operator Telefónica Móviles, with additional carrier deployments to follow.

ACCESS NetFront Browser: 150 mn Deployments Worldwide

ACCESS announced that its market leading NetFront(tm) browser has surpassed 150 million deployments worldwide. Widely recognized as one of the most advanced Internet browsers in the world, NetFront now also stands as the most widely deployed and actively used browser in the beyond-PC market, which includes mobile phones, PDAs, Digital Televisions, set-top boxes, digital televisions, automobile telematics, game consoles, Internet kiosks, email terminals, and many other Internet devices.

Notable Revelations from Japan's Cellcos

Japan’s Big Three cellcos, NTT DoCoMo, KDDI, and Vodafone, released their Oct-Dec 2004 quarterly financials in the past fortnight, and there’s a lot of information to be digested. If the endless listings of multi-billion-yen profits bore you, then it might be interesting to take a look at some of the new technologies, service models, and data tariffs that were announced along with the financial results.

Storage Technologies to Remake Mobile Phones

Every so often, it’s a pleasure to break from our current wireless Internet and mobile telecoms coverage and take a look into the far distant future to see where mobile technology will take us in the coming decades. Esoteric technologies like super-miniature hard disk drives (HDDs) and 3-D holographic storage systems promise to radically remake the portable devices—phones, PDAs and iPods—that we tote with us every day. In the future, you’ll be able to stuff far more data into your cell phone than you can into your desktop PC today; and to my surprise this week, I found out that the far distant future isn’t so distant after all.

Samsung Announces Record Profit

Samsung, announced that its net income for last year exceeded 10.7 trillion won (US$10.3 billion), making it the first company in South Korea to achieve the landmark figure. Last year, Samsung said it sold 86.53 million handsets worldwide, up 55 percent from a year ago. For all of 2004, Samsung’s net income jumped 81 percent to a record 10.7 trillion won. Full-year sales rose 32.2 percent to 57.6 trillion won, the company said.