NTT DoCoMo, Inc. and its eight regional subsidiaries today announced the upcoming launch of the new mova 505iS series of five PDC (2G) i-mode mobile phones featuring mega-pixel cameras. Menu icons downloaded from i-mode sites can be saved as preferred icons, one of various ways that the handsets can be highly personalized. The D505iS will be released on October 23, followed consecutive release of the other four models in the near future.
Nihon Enterprise and helloNetwork Asia today announced an agreement that will further enhance the two companies’ strong domestic and global presence in the field of mobile content distribution. The partnership will enable Nihon Enterprise to expand its content distribution channels by utilizing helloNetwork’s unique Java-based Mobile Media technology for premiere content distribution.
We talked to a number of new and established Japanese companies and they were pessimistic about the BREW platform. The general consensus from most developers was that BREW is a bind: without a market, they won’t invest the three or four months it takes to develop a BREW games app. But without the app, where’s the market. Then we had a fascinating chat with the CEO of HelloNet, a Korean BREW contents developer, about their real-time multiplayer network games that are set to roll out here soon. Our interview with Sammy Networks yielded an interesting comment on who to watch for the next mobile gaming market boom in Asia. You better grab a coffee and sit back to enjoy a whole new kind of 3G -Games, Geeks and Girls- video show. Full Program Run-time 21:41
There was some real gold buried in the 2,460 booths and 505 companies that exhibited at the Combined Exhibition of Advanced Technologies (CEATEC) 2003 last week, and a bunch of press releases over the last two weeks have induced us to write a comprehensive tech review of what’s new with mobile technology. At the show we managed to corner the chief designer of Mitsubishi Electric’s next generation keitais (NGKs?) on a new series of very cool modular phones they have developed for next year, Melco looks to have made a conceptual breakthrough with these prototype handsets. Suffice to say we think that series with plug-and-play games console, megapix camera, GPS and other modules that snap onto it’s sleek clamshell design, looks as if they will blow the competition (Sony Ericsson and Samsung versions) out of the water. We also took a ride on the new Sanyo TV-Phone coming out for KDDI and saw a few other goodies like ASIMO and fish feeding with FOMA! We’ll show you all these cool new keitai in action, so be on standby for our video program that’s coming soon. The central message we took from CEATEC was that there are plenty of outstanding innovations coming on stream in the next 18 months that will finally herald the dawn of “ubiquitous” communication. Ahh, ubiquity, the means-anything buzzword that launched a thousand PowerPoint presentations…
KDDI, Okinawa Cellular and Navitime Corporation are pleased to announce that they will launch ‘EZ Navi Walk’ at the end of October 2003. EZ Navi Walk is a full-scale navigation service for pedestrians that makes use of location information from GPS satellites. EZ Navi Walk has been developed from EZ Navi, and allows users to quickly measure the location of a mobile phone through GPS positioning enabling real time continuous display of their location. The service is equipped with voice guidance and other functions that can navigate users to their destinations.
The prime feature of the ubiquitous society is being able to access networks anywhere, anytime, and one of the leading roles in this society is being played by cellular telephones, which let users remotely control elements of lifestyle and entertainment, and link directly with people around the world through video and data communications. At CEATEC JAPAN 2003, visitors are experiencing the developing world of the cellular telephone.
