Japan's wireless market week wrap-up
NTT DoCoMo, Nippon TV set up mobile TV fund
- NTT DoCoMo and Nippon Television Network will each invest $42 million in a fund dedicated to develop mobile phone TV opportunities.
NTT DoCoMo to continue heavy 3G spending
- NTT DoCoMo chief Masao Nakamura said the company's capital spending would peak in 2006 as it launches a final push to shift users to its 3G network. The company's plans for the business year beginning in April include a 3.3% increase in capital spending and continued promotions for 3G handsets.
Nokia, Sanyo unveil joint venture
- Nokia and Sanyo announced a joint venture to develop and manufacture CDMA phones.
Japanese companies announce 3G phone venture
- NTT DoCoMo, Renesas Technology, Fujitsu, Mitsubishi Electric and Sharp announced a plan to jointly develop a single-chip platform for building 3G phones.
Nokia ships 3G phone to DoCoMo
- Nokia has begun shipping its newest smartphone, the Foma NM850iG, to NTT DoCoMo in Japan.
Toshiba intros bar code-based mobile search
- Toshiba's solution uses the phone's digital camera to snap a photo of the bar code of a product and then carries out real-time blog searches for that product's reviews.
NTT DoCoMo, RealNetworks in video software tie-up
- A memoruandum of understanding is signed between DoCoMo and RealNetworks to jointly deploy software to boost video streaming capabilities for DoCoMo's phones.
by yaromir @ 9:58 PM
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4 Comments:
I've been following your blog for a while and would like to thank you for writing about various wireless Japanese topics, that is very interesting for me.
The story about Nokia coming up with a FOMA version of the 6630 is really puzelling me. The 6630 is Nokia's first real 3G phone but lacks the camera on the screen side for video telephony. Also, Nokia already sells the 6680 and N70 in Europe which are based on the same platform but much more advanced. I keep hearing that Japan is far ahead in terms of handsets, so how can such a move be sucessful with a phone that is not even in Europe seen as state of the art?
Thanks and keep on bloging,
Martin
Martin, thank you for your comments.
As for the Nokia NM850iG, I agree with you that it lags behind the Japanese phones in terms of technical advancements. But it seems that DoCoMo targets it at the users of its international roaming service World Wing, promoting the phone as one with European design (So, in Europe Japanese will not stand out of the crowd with this model and will blend in :). DoCoMo also claims that while the phone resembles the look of the 6630 model, inside it was fully customized according to DoCoMo's requirements (for instance, you can use i-mode service oversees). My guess is that it took Nokia so long time to customize the phone for DoCoMo, that now it looks being late with its release. Anyway, I believe this phone will have limited sales in Japan.
Do they clain that the phone works in 3GPP UMTS networks as well or only FOMA in Japan and GSM/GPRS/EDGE overseas? I suspect the later but am not sure. Anyway, interesting strategy.
Martin
My understanding it will also support 3GPP UMTS, but it wasn't clear. At least, they claim you can use it for video calls abroad(nevermind that the handset has only one camera on the back!) and you need 3G speeds for video...
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