toshiba
toshiba

toshiba

KDDI Announces 15 New Handsets

Mark May 22 on your calendar under Tokyo mobile madness. In the space of a few hours we had an avalanche of new handset models – 27 in all – announced by both KDDI au and (see our previous post) SoftBank Mobile. The Okura hotel was swarming at 10am as the wraps came off au’s Summer 2007 lineup and of course they have their usual dedicated, and slick, Flash site online Here. It will take us a little while to plow through the complete details of each model, available in Japanese, meanwhile we have compiled a quick overview for you after the jump.

SoftBank Mobile Summer Handsets

SoftBank Mobile announced their handset lineup for the ‘Summer of 2007 Sales Battle’ which will be available from the beginning of June. According to the company press release the 12 new 3G models are focused on style, quality and individuality, see the dedicated Flash site [in Japanese] Here. We note six handsets are coming from Sharp, including the 913SH slider while the upstart telco claims a scoop for the first deployment in Japan of Windows Mobile 6 on two of the units from HTC. Toshiba added three models with Samsung and Panasonic each contributing one. More details after the jump.

Toshiba and Nortel Announce WiMax JV

Nortel and Toshiba have announced an agreement for the joint development of mobile WiMax base stations for Japanese and global markets. In Japan, Nortel and Toshiba jointly participated in the government’s next-generation wireless trial using WiMax solutions, and successfully completed trial service provision in the Tohoku region of northern Japan between December 2006 to March 2007.

Sharp Holds Top Handset Market Share

According to a report issued Feb. 28 by IDC Japan, Sharp continued to lead sales in the Japanese handset market, for the third consectutive quarter, with 21.2% share during Q4 2006. The investigation also noted that domestic shipments increased 11.2% year-on-year with 12.9 million handsets sold during the period. Panasonic claimed 11% with NEC, SonyEricsson and Toshiba all coming in close behind at 9 – 10% of sales volume each.

Japan Mobile Industry News Mash-up

It’s been a rather hectic few weeks here, as mentioned at the end of our latest WWJ Newsletter, so we thought a chocolate covered bundle of tidbits would be in order today. With 3GSM running this week in Barcelona, on top of the usual post January speed cycle, we’ve clipped over a dozen highlights together for a sweetheart ‘Valentines Eve’ post chalk full of wireless news goodies collected over the last little while, just for you after the jump.

Toshiba Produces 2GB Flash Memory

Toshiba Corp. said on Wednesday it will match rival Samsung Electronics March launch of the industry’s first 2-Gigabyte NAND flash chip by mass-producing a chip with as much storage a month later. Toshiba, which aims to take a combined 40 percent market share with partner SanDisk Corp. by 2008, will begin by shipping samples of its 2-Gigabyte chips in March, using 56-nanometre process technology, and plans monthly shipments of 300,000 chips from April.