NEC Australia has announced the launch of their first i-mode 3G mobile phone – the NEC N600i – for those down under. Available now in Telstra stores, the dual-mode N600i is equipped with the Access NetFront 3.2 browser, a QVGA 2-in colour LCD screen, Bluetooth, TransFlash memory card and a 1.3-megapixel auto-focus camera. The new unit is also available to order via Telstra’s i-mode online shop.
A total of 32 women, hoping to become presenters for a video-based cell-phone weather service, gathered at KDDI’s Designing Studio showroom in Tokyo’s Harajuku district. Final auditions for the Kanto region’s “Weather News” service began on Monday when KDDI selected their short-list of just 7 from the 1,034 people who had submitted written applications. Online voting to choose the two winning candidates will be carried out 12-25 October.
Vodafone K.K. have just announced that on 1 November 2005 the company will introduce “Love Flat-rate,” Japan’s first mobile service that allows customers to call and send mail to a designated party as much as they like, according to a press release. The service name stands for the ability to call and mail the person ‘one loves most’ without worrying about the cost. The service lets a customer call and mail a designated party (one Vodafone K.K. phone number) without limitations, and discounts video calls by 50% for a monthly fixed charge of 300 yen (315 yen including tax).
The Mobile Intelligence Japan (MIJ) team spent Wednesday at the CEATEC show, checking out some of the most innovative mobile tech and services the Japanese ecosystem is currently developing. To start, Hitachi’s methanol fuel-cell handset for KDDI [ close-up image here ] was one of the major announcements made during this year’s event. Several Japanese electronics manufacturers, including Toshiba and Fujitsu, are working on a fuel-cell solution for powering and recharging cell phones and other portable devices; Fujitsu’s rather large (as big as a shoe?) version for DoCoMo provides up to 9 Watt-hours of juice.
There were also big line ups to view the new digital TV cell phones made by Sanyo, Panasonic and Sharp (for each of KDDI, DoCoMo and Vodafone) with plenty of people crowded around the NHK booth to test drive one of the units; all are due to launch by next spring and run for around 2 hours.
Later, we spotted Net2Com’s new IP-and-Skype handset available (since last week) for Livedoor mobile customers and were surprised to see a prototype streaming satellite handset from DoCoMo. The Mobaho! compatible phone — a full FOMA 3G device — will receive music and other programming direct from Mobile Broadcasting Corp.’s bird high above Tokyo and will launch next spring; the Mitsubishi-made device has about 2 hours of continuous playback time and appears intended to steal some of KDDI’s Chaku-Uta-Full thunder. Be sure to watch our latest video program featuring EZ Channel.
Finally, your WWJ crew had a chance to sit down and speak with Dave Graveline to record a radio interview covering some of the show’s highlights to be broadcast on 10 October.
CEATEC, otherwise known as ‘Disneyland for mobi-keeners,’ is possibly planet Earth’s most intense concentration of mobile goodies. KDDI’s “EZ Channel” system, launched together with flat-rate data billing and the high-speed 1X EV-DO “WIN” 3G network in late 2003, is one of the few content services optimised for the network’s 2.4-Mbps nominal speed. WWJ went to CEATEC to grab the details on EZ Channel, which includes a unique overnight download feature that makes use of the quietest time of the day to deliver up to 3 megabytes of video programming to subscribers’ handsets while the network snoozes.
The EZ Channel service allows subscribers to select 3 programs from a menu of 53 channels (by end-October 2005), including news, weather, sports and entertainment favorites such as “Chaku Uta Ranking” (Label Mobile), “Sponge Bob Mobile” (Viacom) and Disney Mobile Wave. A single channel typically runs up to 1MB, and is refreshed 1-3 times per week (some, like weather, are new daily).
ADSL Broadband firm and mobile carrier wannabe eAccess is in discussion with American’s Goldman Sachs Group regarding significant investment in the firm. eAccess issued a Japanese press release in response to an article in the Nihon Keizai Daily. The article reported that the company plans to partner with Goldman Sachs with an investment by the American corporate giant of 25 billion yen through GS Capital Partners. Goldman Sachs has ties with Universal Studios Japan and could smooth plans for eAccess to distribute Universal video games over Japanese 3G cell phones. The article went on to say that they may also develop phone-based travel content including golf and hotel reservations for properties with Goldman Sachs ties.
