helloNetwork, the top developer of Java(TM)-based wireless streaming media technology, has partnered with Today Fast East Tone (FET), the third largest mobile carrier in Taiwan, to launch a new range of services which provide multimedia services to FET’s Bravo subscribers. These new services include downloadable movie clips and MTVs for a variety of different GPRS and JAVA enabled handsets.
Matsushita Electric, best known worldwide for its Panasonic brand of consumer electronics and digital communications products, announced today that it will begin marketing of “Kurashi (Japanese for ‘home life’) Net”, a networked home appliances/housekeeping system to enhance the users’ daily living. The system, to be marketed from September 1, will enable the user to control networked home appliances, such as air-conditioners, refrigerators, washing machines and microwave ovens, through wireless control from the central terminal, named “Kurashi Station,” or from a mobile phone. The system also monitors security and other household conditions, alerting the users by sounding an alarm linked to the “Watchdog Safety Sensor” in cases of emergency.
Sharp Corporation and Texas Instruments Inc. announced today they will combine their respective strengths to provide a reference design for GSM/GPRS camera phones, significantly cutting the necessary design time and resources required by manufacturers to introduce new camera handsets into market. This reference design will combine Sharp’s 1 Mega Pixel CCD camera module, flash memory and liquid crystal module (LCD), together with TI’s TCS2100 chipset for GSM/GPRS cell phones and TI’s OMAP-DM270 multimedia processor. The reference design also supports high level video including Nancy Technology from Office NOA and MPEG-4 standards. In addition, TI and Sharp will work together on the development of related software and technical support.
SAP AG and Sharp Corporation announced an agreement to partner in technology development and marketing for mobile solutions for corporate users. In recent years, demand has been increasing for business applications that can be used not only on wirebound office systems, but also in the wireless mobile environment. This is particularly true for CRM systems intended for mobile workers, such as sales personnel and service technicians who work outside of the office. In the past, laptop computers have been used to handle such advanced services, but calls are growing louder for the ability to use compact, lightweight and nimble mobile terminal devices for this purpose.
Sharp Corporation has signed an agreement with Datang Telecom Technology Co., Ltd., a major Chinese manufacturer of communications equipment, to supply camera-equipped GSM mobile phones to the Chinese market. Sharp has been manufacturing and selling audio-visual products, home appliances, office equipment and electronic components in China, but this is the company’s first entry into the Chinese mobile phone market.
Mobile Healthcare Inc. today announced the launch of Lifewatcher, a world first in integrated mobile disease management. The new service, which operates over a mobile phone or other handheld device, is the first comprehensive mobile disease self-management system for diabetes or obesity sufferers or individuals with restricted dietary and health needs.
Herewith, I’d like to query you, the loyal and keen WWJ readers (some 30% of whom are in Europe, according to last fall’s subscriber survey), on what an outsider needs to know about Europe’s mobile Internet. What are the companies, technologies, business models, and content services serving to boost the future? What – and who – matters most? Which will triumph: i-mode or Vodafone Live? Can Japanese terminal makers kick their way into the market? And will the Open Mobile Alliance boost Europe’s wireless industry far ahead of Japan’s – given sufficient buy-in from content providers and software creators?
So far, Japanese carriers haven’t really pushed location services as stand-alone products; they’re sold as “part of” a handset and there are no handsets that are sold only as, or primarily for, navi-service capabilities. Sure, KDDI did do a big marketing push when their first GPS-enabled keitai hit the market in December 2001, but now it’s just one more feature onboard their fleet (in the January catalog, KDDI showed six of 11 handsets as having GPS capability). Also: Looks like Japan’s WLAN market – in addition to being highly fragmented – is one of the cheapest.
Japan’s cell phone makers, pioneers of the camera-equipped handset, look set to intrude into digital camera makers’ turf as a fierce battle for market share draws them toward photo-phones with million-pixel resolution. No one is yet consigning digital cameras to the high-tech scrap heap, but some of the dozen or so handset makers that crowd the Japanese market are preparing to launch “megapixel” photo phones this year with picture quality good enough to make prints.
Tokyo’s HI Corp. has developed a 3D-graphics rendering engine that was first deployed by J-Phone/Vodafone in 2001. The software allows a cell phone to display very cool 3-D images that can be rotated, spun around, and otherwise manipulated. Now NTT DoCoMo and KDDI have adopted HI’s technology, and the company is keen to boost 3D imaging into markets elsewhere. Unfortunately, Sony, Sharp, and other heavyweights have taken notice. In the cut-throat, mobile technology ocean, will HI Corp. end up as one more little fish eaten by the big fish? Today’s program features Tokyo’s HI Corp., a 10-year-old software house founded by a bunch of students that has created some very cool technology.
