toshiba
toshiba

toshiba

Korea, Japan, Pastel-Hued PDAs, and Tokyo's Good 'ol Days are Back

The past couple of weeks saw two lavish events at trendy Tokyo venues hosted by carriers NTT DoCoMo and J-Phone to fete their content provider communities (so, yes, there was a lot of overlap in the guest lists). One attendee at the J-Phone event, held at Zepp in Odaiba, reported that it was a sweaty, raucous evening with content community punters packed in six deep. “There was a lengthy line-up of folks waiting to exchange meishi business cards,” she said, adding that a good time was had, evidently, by all.

New BREW Handset – Toshiba A5304T ;-(

A regular WWJ reader who requested anonymity (for obvious reasons) send me a blast panning the new Toshiba BREW-enabled CDMA 1X handset. “Just thought you might be interested. I bought a A5304T with BREW last week, and it is crap! Actually, the BREW part and the camera are all right, and the phone design itself is nice; but the user interface and display suck.

KDDI 3Q Rock'in Results and BREW Comes to a Boil

Berman warns, however, that with a typical handset cost of 37,000 yen in the latest quarter, “it will require about 23 months to cover [the] cost for upgrade customers.” He goes on to state that this creates a difficult situation for KDDI, wherein there’s lots of room for concern for the cost of the 2G-to-3G upgrade cycle. Remember, too, that KDDI has committed to launching a 1X EV-DO upgrade in late 2003. Will it have to commit to another two-year cycle to convert subscribers to the new system? If so, the expense half of their balance sheet may get a little out of control no matter how strong the revenue side remains.

Panasonic vs. Sharp vs. Toshiba: Handset Showdown

Panasonic vs. Sharp vs. Toshiba: Handset ShowdownWherein WWJ staff line up a sexy, passion-red, brand-spanking new J-T08 from Toshiba- with a stunning LCD display – against a dowdy, dull-silver, two-year-old Panasonic P209iS in the handset grudge match of the year! We also toss a Sharp SH-52 camera phone into the ring… Japan’s pocket rockets have come a long way, baby, and it’s tough to beat the Tosh’s sleek lines, world-beating LCD screen, and silky smooth sound. Like their automaker brethren of a generation ago, does this lop-sided fight mean that Japan’s handset makers have mastered the art of ‘continuous improvement?’ We think so – and this program shows you why.

DoCoMo, J-Phone, KDDI: Keitai Catalogs Tell All

I picked up the November cell phone catalogs from several carriers the other day, including DoCoMo (for 3G FOMA), KDDI, and Tu-ka, as well as the J-Sky service catalog from J-Phone. You really needn’t look much further than these monthly catalogs if you want a concise, full-color, and neatly packaged window into the marketing plans and keitai sales hopes of the major Japanese carriers. Depending on which handset you have, you can now access data networks at 9.6, 28.8, 64, or 384 Kbps – and many devices can access two networks. Note that 64 Kbps data is available via FOMA (the 3G network) and via PHS (not formally called “2G” but certainly not 3G). Finally, there’s the Mzone WLAN service that operates at hotspots inside the Yamanote line and at a few other locations.

Tectonic Change in Japan's Mobile Handset Market

The past few days have seen Japan’s big electronic makers releasing their quarterly and semiannual results, and the news from Sony, NEC, Fujitsu, and others has been mostly bad where cell phones are concerned. There have also been a lot of media reports on Japan’s ailing phone tanmatsu (terminal) market, and it appears that majors changes are underway. First, the media reports. On October 10 JEITA announced that domestic shipments of cellular phones fell 18.3 percent in August 2002 from a year earlier to 3.26 million units. The drop resumed a 13-month-long decline that was only broken (briefly) in July 2002 due to sales of camera-equipped models. Moreover, shipments of PHS handsets fell by 64 percent to 73,000 units (extending their losing streak to 18months!).

CTIA Notes and NEC 3G Recalls

WWJ contributor Michael Thuresson was in Las Vegas, Nevada, last week and managed to pull himself away from the one-armed bandits long enough to drop in on the CTIA “Wireless IT and Internet 2002” fall show. His report below was culled from a late-night, bleary-eyed email dispatch (italicized annotations partly contributed by me). Who says war correspondents in Kandahar have more fun than tech stringers in Vegas? 😉