Sharp
Sharp

Sharp

Fujitsu, Mitsubishi Forge 3G Handset Alliance

Here’s one for the books: Symbian OS proponent Fujitsu and Mitsubishi (which makes decent handsets for the domestic market but is unknown outside of Japan) have announced that they are getting together to develop new FOMA handsets. The press release today appears to be dressed up in terms of Fujitsu offering its expertise to Mitsubishi with Symbian, but it also hints that the two will combine on hardware development too. Given the fact that Fujitsu is a leading proponent of Symbian, and that DoCoMo president Keiji Tachikawa hinted that Symbian will be the OS of choice, the announcement looks as if Mitsubishi has figured the lay of the land and jumped on the bandwagon.

Nokia and ACCESS Collaborate on Advanced Browser for 3G Multimedia Phones

ACCESS, a global provider of mobile content delivery and Internet technologies, announced today that it has collaborated with Nokia to demonstrate ACCESS’ acclaimed NetFront mobile browser for WCDMA optimized releases of Nokia’s Series 60 Platform. With a broad range of plug-in support, NetFront enables downloading and playing of popular content formats such as RealMedia or MPEG4 movies, music, and SMIL packages. NetFront’s versatility makes it a perfect launch pad for multimedia and infotainment on the move.

Sharp Ships New GX30 Cell Phone

Sharp Corporation announces that it will commence shipment of its new GX30 mobile phone with built-in megapixel CCD camera and color LCD to the world’s largest mobile community, the Vodafone Group. The GX30 is the first mobile phone in the European market to be equipped with a megapixel CCD camera. The new model will be released by Vodafone operators around the world starting March 2004.

NEC 3G FOMA 900i Launches Feb. 22

The model that many customers have been waiting for, NEC’s version of the 900i, are to go on sale on Feb. 22, NEC and DoCoMo said today. Meanwhile, DoCoMo has said it’s going to show FOMA off at the 3GSM World Congress 2004 in France next week with a direct link to Japan. Excitement is growing about the 900i series, with informal impressions collected by WWJ, plus hard evidence that we’ve heard from InfoPLANT indicating that NEC’s 900i could be a smash hit.

Vodafone KK: J-Phone Not Lost in Translation?

Those watching this week’s video program will get to see what a howler Bow-Lingual is on Vodafone’s new V610SH handset from Sharp. We are just itching to find out if the same inventive and creative genius that seemed to permeate the old J-Phone can re-establish itself in 2004 at Vodafone KK. A recent study shows that, as we suspected, the Japanese public is going gangbusters for TV mobile phones. Having developed Japan’s first TV celly, the former J-Phone Corps have proven, yet again, they were ahead of the curve in understanding what customers want. But it is also apparent that Vodafone KK will need more than highly entertaining doggy gimmicks if it is to stop losing market share to KDDI and DoCoMo’s 3G services.

Bow-Lingual – A Cell Phone for Fido

Bow-Lingual - A Cell Phone for FidoWe jumped at the chance to take the new Bow-Lingual Connect software for wireless ‘walkies’ recently. Takara, makers of the popular canine speech translator, had a dog to lend us, but it fell ill. Then a friendly ballerina’s French Bulldog pulled out at the last minute, so we conducted this highly unscientific test on Vodafone’s V601SH handset by Sharp using our own pre-recorded (with Movie Sha-Mail) video of a since-deceased beagle. We may have been barking up the wrong tree with this approach, or howling mad to try to make sense of Bow-Lingual, but even if Takara’s mobile version is a bit beastly, it shouldn’t distract from the unit itself, which is a jolly good cell phone. Full Program Run-time 11:38