KDDI au ships Hitachi Woo mobile TV phone

Mobile phones with built-in one-seg TV tuner are driving replacement sales in Japan, making any self-respecting handset manufacturer release its version of mobile TV phone. Now that everybody does mobile TV phone, how are you supposed to differentiate your product from the bunch of others. Well, there are some ways to do so. First of all, you are in luck if your company is also in flat-screen TV business, because you can borrow its established brand and re-use it for mobile phones. As a result, we have Sony Ericsson Bravia, Sharp Aquos, and Panasonic Viera mobile TV phones attacking the market. Hitachi is not exception here as it also uses its TV brand Wooo to woo mobile phone customers. In order to make the appeal of Wooo handset stronger, Hitachi says they adopted the same graphic quality control technology Picture Master they are using in Wooo TV sets. Besides, the external design of the Wooo handset also borrows from the Cutting Edge Design concept used in Wooo TVs. To further differentiate itself Hitachi brings into play Wide QVGA organic light emitting display that complements handset’s slim body (14.2 mm) in a very cool way. Not to mention handset’s 2MP camera, contactless payment capability, GPS navigation and full HTML browser. KDDI au is shipping it this week at unknown price under the Wooo W53H model name. I can only say, “Wow Wooo!”

Phone Specs
Model:	Wooo W53H
Carrier:	KDDI au
Maker:	Hitachi
Price:	N/A
Form factor:	Clam/Swivel
Color variations:	Black, White, Purple
Weight:	131 g
Dimensions:	51 X 107 X 14.2 mm
Main display:	2.8 inch WQVGA (240 X 400 pixels) OLED
Talk time:	250 min
Standby time:	360 hours
Platform / OS:	N/A
Memory:	100MB shared with BREW folder
Memory card slot:	microSD card
GPS / Location:	Yes (EZ Navi Walk - Voice input 3D navi)
Bluetooth:	No
Infrared:	Yes
USB:	N/A
Wi-Fi:	No
Camera:	2MP
Video calling:	No
One-seg TV:	Yes
Music player:	Yes (Lismo, SD Audio)
Browser:	Full HTML
FM radio:	No
Mobile Wallet:	Yes (EZ FeliCa, QUICKPay)
QR-code:	Yes
Biometrics:	No

Source: KDDI au

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.