Toshiba Corporation has announced the prototype [image] of a highly compact direct methanol fuel cell (DMFC) that can be integrated into devices as small as digital audio players and wireless headsets for mobile phones. The new cell measures in at a compact 22 x 56 x 4.5mm (maximum of 9.1mm, for the fuel tank), and and weighs only 8.5g. It can power small hand held devices for up to 20 hours on a single 2cc charge of highly concentrated methanol.
TU Media, a Korean consortium for satellite-based mobile broadcasting service, said on Monday it is in a dispute with Toshiba Corp. over royalties on the Japanese firm’s technology. Toshiba, which has the biggest stake in Japan’s satellite-based mobile TV service consortium, has sent an official document to the Telecommunications Technology Association, a Korean business lobby, requesting the Korean consortium pay it “a royalty of 2 percent per terminal sold, regardless of its type”, says TU Media.
Yesterday, the Wireless Watch Japan site was slammed by record traffic after we posted our first big Net news scoop: Casio’s announcement of what appears to be the world’s first 3-megapixel camera phone, due for release later this summer via KDDI. And that wasn’t the only big Japan handset news from the past few days: both KDDI (working with Hitachi) and NTT DoCoMo have announced concept models capable of receiving terrestrial digital TV broadcasts, while Vodafone’s been mentioned as working on new karaoke-enabled handsets with Sharp and Toshiba. Phones in Japan have become culturally connected communicators and terminal makers who think more like artists and less like engineers will flourish.
Toshiba Corporation today announced its latest strategic roadmaps for the memory market, which reflect the company’s continued focus on the rapidly-growing file storage market, the mobile electronics memory market, and high-performance solutions for networking and digital consumer applications. This market segmentation enables Toshiba to respond rapidly to customer requirements and develop advanced memory solutions to meet their needs. Toshiba’s current line-up of memory products serving these three market segments includes NAND Flash, high-density NOR Flash, low-power SRAMs, Pseudo SRAMs (PSRAMs) and advanced Multi-Chip Packages (MCP) which integrate various memory technologies into a single package; and for the networking and extreme performance digital consumer market, Network Fast-Cycle RAMs (Network FCRAMs(TM)) and XDR(TM) DRAM.
New technology and business plans are making 3G networks profitable for NTT DoCoMo and other Japanese carriers, as well as for content providers. Powerful terminals, workable billing and rich content all contribute to fast growth. Japanese mobile users can receive media content — news and information in the form of text, images and video — delivered direct to their phones, and they access media while mobile in large numbers. In Part 1 of a story published today on the JMR site, WWJ editor Daniel Scuka delves into the technologies making media content delivery via mobile a reality, including Web, Java, TV, and FM radio. Log on for a review of the highlights. “Japan’s Success in Mobile Media Has Wanna-Be Messages for West”.
It’s been a year or so, but finally Vodafone K.K. is attempting an aggressive rollout of impressive (albeit) 2/2.5G handset terminals clearly aimed at fun– and the young. Over the next couple of months the company is adding 5 terminals [.pdf here], including the new V602 from Sharp and V601 from Toshiba that have mulitimedia features even more impressive than those aboard DoCoMo 900i series, as well as an improved radio phone from Sanyo and a clearer TV picture from Sharp. Better still, last week’s news that Vodafone has decided to adopt a FeliCa compatible removable solution for contactless payments shows the company is definitely on board with promoting the mobile phone away from a communications/ game device into become a viable e-commerce tool not only here in Japan, but potentially accross the vast Vodafone empire.
