KDDI au's top ten selling phone models

GfK, a market research company, published ranks of top selling mobile phones with each operator in Japan during the last week of November. This post will cover KDDI au. See table below for the top 10 sellers with au brand.

KDDI au Top Ten
1 (1)	Toshiba W53T
2 (2)	Casio Exilim W53CA
3 (3)	Sharp W52SH
4 (4)	Sanyo W52SA
5 (5)	Kyocera A5528K
6 (8)	Sony Ericsson W53S
7 (6)	Casio W52CA
8 (7)	Panasonic W52P
9 (9)	Toshiba W54T
10 (20)	Kyocera W53K

Source: GfK via ITMedia

Casio mimics Sony branding strategy, shows Exilim cameraphone

Consumer electronics brands are being adopted by mobile handset arms of Japanese CE manufacturers. The trend started with Sony allowing its joint venture with Ericsson to sell featured mobile phones under Sony’s well-known Walkman, Cybershot and Bravia brands. Now Casio follows suit by assigning its Exilim digital camera brand to the cameraphone destined to be offered by KDDI au in Japan in near future. The rumors of Casio Exilim cameraphone surfaced first back in May and now it looks like its debut is imminent, according to ITMedia report from Wireless Japan 2007 trade show happening in Japan this week. The phone spots 5.1MP camera supported with specially developed Exilim Engine for Mobile. Interesting part is that the phone has a clamshell form factor with swiveling screen protecting it from scratches when not used and allowing using it as a huge viewfinder (VGA 2.8inch) in a shooting mode. More specs and pricing details are coming after KDDI au’s official announcement.

Source: IT Media (Japanese)

Casio Hitachi to make inroads into US market

Credit: PhoneScoop.com

First news about Casio’s intentions to enter the US market appeared in November last year. It turns out that it was true. According to Phonescoop.com, the FCC approved the G’zOne handset model, with Verizon Wireless brand mentioned in the FCC documentation. The G’zOne is a ruggedized, water-resistant handset, first shipped to KDDI in May 2005. After more than warm reception of the G’zOne by Japanese users, the company brought it to Korea in December last year and enjoyed high-level sales. Riding on success of their G'zOne, Casio Hitachi worked with Verizon to optimize the handset for the use on Verizon’s high-speed 3G EV-DO network. It can take a couple of months before the handset hits Verizon store shelves.

Casio and Hitachi joined their forces in 2004 and they are relatively small handset vendors, being outside of top-five domestic handset manufacturers. Merging was their only option to sustain and it looks like they are doing fine by expanding their presence beyond Japan.

Casio’s WCDMA move

With the number of WCDMA users accelerating throughout the globe, Casio decided that it was time to start producing 3G phones compatible with UMTS standard as well.

Having entered the handset business in 2000, Casio initially acquired licenses from Qualcomm to make CDMA One and CDMA2000 1x/EV-DO mobile phones. The company was shipping CDMA handsets to KDDI domestically and to South Korea internationally. However, in February 2006 the company expanded the licensing deal with Qualcomm to cover handsets, supporting the rest of 3G pack -- WCDMA and TD-SCDMA technologies. With this deal, Casio will have an opportunity to target at any 3G operator in the world, not to mention NTT DoCoMo and Vodafone in Japan. The question though is how successful will it be in this endeavor?

Source: Casio press release (Japanese)