Vodafone KK announces today that in early July 2005 it plans to offer two new 2G (PDC) handsets, the V501T by Toshiba and V501SH by Sharp, so customers can easily coordinate handsets with their mood, fashion or lifestyle. With the V501T, customers can change a handset’s appearance with interchangeable covers, and the V501SH comes with panels that alter its tactile feel.
Vodafone Japan said today they would limit SMS transmissions starting 31 May 2005 as part of new anti-spam measures aimed at making its Vodafone live! mobile Internet service more dependable for customers. Specifically, the number of SMS that can be sent to from a Vodafone KK 3G handset within one day will be limited to 500 starting 31 May 2005. Handsets that exceed this limit will not be able to send additional SMS for the following 20 days.
With little fanfare and no press conference, NTT DoCoMo has released five new 3G FOMA 901iS FeliCa-enabled handsets into the digital world: D901iS (Mitsubishi), F901iS (Fujitsu), P901iS (Panasonic), N901iS (NEC) and SH901iS (Sharp). All have certain features in common with other 901i models, including music players, “3D Sound,” Deco-Mail to decorate email, G-GUIDE interactive TV guide and recording programmer (see the .pdf for full specs). New features include a 4-megapixel recorded resolution camera for the D901iS and a full Web browser on the N901iS. The company says that the 901iS-series is DoCoMo’s first in which all models are equipped for mobile-wallet functions, but the five handsets actually do a lot more than drain virtual bank accounts. The pre-installed Adobe Reader LE, for example, enables 901iS phones to view PDF files downloaded from i-mode sites. The application includes access to all basic PDF functions including scrolling, paging, text searches, bookmarks and page rotation and users can easily email files, dial a number or navigate to a Web link in the file. But wait, there’s more…
Word to the Wireless — Japan’s KDDI will launch a free mobile weblog system, dubbed Duoblog, for subscribers to its 3G WIN EZ Web service on 19 May. In a first from Japan cellcos, users can access and update these mobile blogs directly from their handset or PC through the KDDI Duogate portal. Duoblog sites will be fully customizable with backgrounds (skins), emoticons, images, and applications. Maybe your humble scribes here at WWJ should sign-up and join in the fun..?!? Overseas mobile sites like WinkSite and Hip-Top Nation (to name a few) already provide tools to create free moblogs (mobile blogs) or mobile editions of web logs that can be accessed worldwide from Web enabled cell phones, PDAs and PCs.
At press time, NTT DoCoMo spokesperson Tomoko Tsuda stated that the company has “no immediate plans” to launch a mobile blogging site. Vodafone Japan, too, is taking a wait-and-see attitude, saying they would “monitor market developments in this regard.”
Today, at the WWW2005 Conference, the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) announced the launch of the Mobile Web Initiative (MWI) – an endeavor to make Web access from a mobile device as simple, easy, and convenient as Web access from a desktop device. “Mobile access to the Web has been a second class experience for far too long,” explained Tim Berners-Lee, W3C Director. “MWI recognizes the mobile device as a first class participant, and will produce materials to help developers make the mobile Web experience worthwhile. “
The April subscriber numbers are public and the news is mixed, at best, for Big V. Vodafone KK suffered a loss of 180,800 2G subscribers but only gained 141,300 3G users, for a net loss of 39,500 subs. This has got to be disappointing given that the March’s loss had fallen to a mere 7,400 and company management were likely hoping April would see a turnaround with the net change moving into the black.
