Symbian
Symbian

Fujitsu's New VoIP/PHS Handset

Fujitsu's New VoIP/PHS HandsetEarlier this week, NTT DoCoMo showcased a prototype 3G/WLAN combination phone carefully configured to make it useless for public hot spots. Against this, Fujitsu Labs and spinoff Net-2Com Corp. have developed something much more useful — a VoIP/PHS phone aimed at the consumer market to be commercialized this fall, with CDMA, GSM, and other versions to follow “depending on market demand.” WWJ treked over to the Fujitsu Solution Forum event in Tokyo recently to have a look at this breakthrough phone; we also took a test ride on Fujitsu Lab’s new PDA unit running a virtual hotspot application that should be coming to reality near you sometime soon.

Symbian Settles Share Structure

Symbian announced today the completion of the preemption process for the sales of Psion’s shares confirming that all the shareholders (except Samsung) were to exercise their rights. The real significance of today’s announcement is the clear roadmap, supported by a cash injection and an increase in headcout of 300 over the next 18 months, to drive the Symbian OS into mid-tier devices by, among other things, bringing down the bill of materials for the OS phone from today’s minimum of $132 to $78 by 2008.

NTT DoCoMo's Nakamura: New and Luke Warm!

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.

NetFront Microbrowser Selected for New NEC Handsets on Hutchinson 3G

ACCESS, a global provider of Internet access technologies, today announced that its NetFront v3.0 microbrowser has been deployed in NEC’s new e616, c616, e313 and c313 handsets for use on Hutchison 3G’s W-CDMA network in Europe and Asia. NEC also selected ACCESS’ AVE(TM) -SSL encryption modules for the handset deployment.

ACCESS Announces First Full-Featured Browser for QUALCOMM'S BREW

ACCESS, a global provider of mobile content delivery and Internet access technologies, today announced that its NetFront v3.0 microbrowser is now available for QUALCOMM’s BREW(R) solution. With NetFront for BREW, mobile operators and handset manufacturers will have access to the some of the most advanced mobile browsing technology in the world. The company announced the product at the BREW 2004 Developers Conference being held June 7-9 in San Diego, California.