According to Kyodo news, Japan Communications has asked the Ministry to weigh in on its stalled negotiations to use DoCoMo’s network. Japan Communications, which has taken the action under the Telecommunications Business Law, is Japan’s first mobile virtual network operator and currently offers wireless data communications services using Willcom’s PHS network.
CESA posted an update yesterday regarding the Tokyo Game Show 2007 agenda with more details on their popular event scheduled for 20 – 23 September out at Makuhari Messe. They have secured 162 exhibitors, up from 148 last year, with companies coming from the United States, Britain, Canada, Australia, Israel, South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and China. Our video coverage from TGS 2006 has been one of the most popular programs on WWJ and there’s little doubt it will be another fantastic show this year as well. [video from the 2007 event now available Here -- eds]
DoCoMo has announced they will unveil their next 700i-series line-up of FOMA 3G handset models this afternoon at a press conference to be held at Roppongi Hills Tower starting at 15:00 JST. They will broadcast a live video stream of the proceedings – Here. The on-demand version will also be available to view shortly afterwards Here.
TV Bank, a division of the SoftBank Group, has announced a new contents service, Yahoo! Animation, in addition to the Yahoo! Streaming channel which was introduced at the end of May. A so-called digest version of official baseball games, offered free of charge via the operators Yahoo! mobile portal, will include games from Japanese major league baseball teams including; the Chiba Lotte Marines, Tohoku Golden Eagles, Hokkaido Nippon Ham Fighters along with the company-owned Fukuoka Softbank Hawks. The service sounds very much like the product offered by Tokyo-based Craftmax as described in our video interview conducted back in spring 2005.
Nuance Communications and Time Warner announced yesterday they have signed a definitive agreement whereby Nuance will acquire Tegic Communications a wholly owned subsidiary of AOL and a developer of embedded software for mobile devices. Tegic brings industry-leading T9 predictive text input software, which has shipped on more than 2.5 billion devices, and next-generation integrated text and touch input solutions to Nuance’s portfolio of voice-enabled applications for device control, mobile search, email and text messaging.
DeNA’s Mobagatown site, which hit 5 million users with over 400 million daily page views back in May, has announced an interesting summer Yukata campaign. In co-operation with Aeon dept. store the companies have set-up a virtual avatar catalogue from which members can build, for a modest fee, their outfit based on actual products complete with best dressed contest prizes. This would seem to be a rather slick ad. campaign ultimately designed to drive purchases of the real thing just in time for the summer matsuri (festival) season. The company ran a similar campaign for Nike where customers who bought physical goods were rewarded with virtual prizes.
According to this article via the Yomiuri Shimbun, airlines are growing increasingly concerned about children bringing cell phones onto planes, as they could interfere with navigation systems. Airlines are especially concerned about the latest children’s cell phones, which contain a built-in crime prevention function that automatically restarts the phone if it is switched off. [WWJ demo video Here]
Mobile Content Networks won a Meffy award in Monte Carlo for its popular FM Radio Music Search application which was launched on DoCoMo’s D903i in 2006. The Meffys Search and Discovery Award was a new category introduced this year to highlight the great work being done by companies to encourage people to discover and enjoy content on their handsets. Congats!
Willcom, Sharp and Microsoft held a press conference yesterday at the Okura Hotel to announce the new W-Zero3 ES smartphone. The 3rd model in their series from Sharp this latest unit weighs in at 157grams and measures just under 18mm thick. Boasting a 3.3 inch VGA (480×800) LCD touch-screen display and the so-called xCrawl jog dial with Windows 6 OS running on Marvells PXA270 520MHz processor and Wi-Fi enabled this device will be available on order here by the end of June. WWJ was on-hand for the event and will post video asap, more details after the jump.
Microsoft Unveiled Windows Mobile 6 in Japan this week during the Mobile and Embedded DevCon event. The latest update of the OS includes mobile versions of Outlook, Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Live Messenger. Windows Mobile 6 also offers a security feature that has the capability to remotely wipe all data from a device should it be lost or stolen. Full details from MS Here.
