Fujitsu Unveils Big-Screen TV Phone
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Newest cell phones sports a 3.1-inch widescreen display plus digital TV reception.
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Just a few years ago, Japan&#39;s lead in all things digital was easy to see. Japanese consumers could buy new domestic gadgets from companies like Sony, Toshiba, and Panasonic, often a year or two before they hit the market in other countries. But now things have changed. With gadgets increasingly coming out at the same time around the world, it&#39;s no longer the hardware that makes something cool, but what you can do with it.[Note: To see some of the technology and services described here in action, watch PC World&#39;s video,&#160;&quot; Made in Japan: Future Tech Today.&quot;]Mobile Digital TVTake OneSeg, Japan&#39;s mobile digital TV system. The entire electronics industry, TV broadcasters, and the government all agreed on a single broadcasting standard,&#160;eliminating the technical competition that&#39;s holding back such services in the United States&#160;and Europe.The result is a popular service that features all the regular terrestrial channels at no cost. Already, 14 million cell phones with the service have been sold, and the sight of people watching TV is becoming more common on trains and in cafes across Japan.The latest phones also allow you to record TV shows. And if you&#39;re in a public space but forgot to bring your headphones, it&#39;s no problem. A couple of button presses brings up the subtitles so you can enjoy the show with the volume turned down.&#160;In addition,&#160;a companion data service provides information about the current show, promotions from the broadcaster, and, often, a link to the TV station&#39;s mobile Internet home page.Mobile Wallet ServiceSomething else that&#39;s popular in cell phones these days is the &quot;Osaifu keitai,&quot; the mobile wallet service. Phones have smart cards embedded inside, and&#160;these cards let you&#160;add applications like electronic money, your commuter pass, an airline mileage card, or a credit card just by downloading some software.The strength of&#160;Japan&#39;s mobile wallet&#160;system is that the industry has settled on a single smart card, Sony&#39;s Felica. Once a person&#39;s phone has this hardware, he or she can add more functionality with software.NTT DoCoMo, Japan&#39;s largest cellular carrier, gives all its customers an electronic credit card application called DCMX Mini. It has a 10,000-yen ($94) credit limit, and charges appear on the phone bill. Big spenders can apply for more credit and use it just like a regular credit card. All you have to do is bring your phone within an inch of the reader, and the transaction can be completed.Electronic money--something that was tried many times but failed during the dot-com bubble--is now becoming very popular, thanks to &quot;Osaifu keitai.&quot;Of the electronic money systems in Japan, Edy from BitWallet is the market leader, accepted in more than 71,000 convenience stores, bookshops, and coffee chains&#160;as well as at&#160;vending machines. More than 37 million cards and cell phones&#160;that support Edy are on the market, and the network handles close to a million transactions per day on average.Connected CarsIn Japan, car navigation systems have been a must-have accessory in&#160;automobiles for years. Streets in cities like Tokyo often don&#39;t have names, so a navigation system can really save you time. But the latest systems, offered by companies like Nissan, come with something extra.Hook your navigation system to your cell phone, and you have a connection through which you can get the latest road and traffic data. The navigation system already knows where the nearest gas station is, but with the network link, it can also tell you where the cheapest&#160;station is, thanks to daily updates on&#160;gas prices.When you&#39;re driving, the phone can connect you to an operator who&#160;will help you on your journey and even remotely reprogram your navigation system so that you never have to take your hands off the wheel.About 10 percent of streets are covered with sensors that provide information on traffic. Nissan is experimenting with a new service that collects data about the roads you&#39;ve driven and the speeds you&#39;ve achieved, and feeds it to a central computer that adds the information&#160;to the traffic database for a more complete picture of jams.High-tech is also being employed in car safety systems like the Round View Monitor. The video from four cameras around the vehicle is processed and brought together into a single image so that you get the illusion of seeing your car from above. It makes backing into tight spaces really easy and is a big-step beyond the single cameras now found on some large cars&#160;and trucks.Warning of the Big OneOne area that&#39;s taken very seriously by people in Japan is earthquakes and disaster prevention. The problem is&#160;you never know when a quake could strike, right? Well, not necessarily.A new warning system has just gone into operation that seeks to quickly detect the weak but fast-moving primary waves from a quake and use them to estimate when the slower-moving but destructive secondary waves will hit.The system won&#39;t help people living at the epicenter of an earthquake, since both kinds of waves arrive virtually simultaneously. But in the event of a major quake, warnings of anywhere from a few seconds to up to a minute can be supplied almost instantaneously.That&#39;s enough time to halt trains and&#160;bring factory equipment to an emergency stop, and for homeowners to switch off the gas. Most deaths in the Kobe quake of 1995 were from fires that started after the quake, so preventing flameups is important.RobotsNo discussion of cool tech in Japan would be complete without robots. Japanese researchers are leading the world in robot technology, and humanoid bots like Honda&#39;s Asimo are especially impressive.The latest version of Asimo can serve drinks on a tray and has gained the ability to work intelligently with other Asimo robots in the vicinity to get jobs done faster. Two of the robots have spent most of January working at Honda&#39;s Tokyo offices, bringing tea or coffee to guests--and almost certainly entertaining the visitors at the same time.Rival car-maker Toyota has a clutch of robots, including one unveiled in December that plays the violin. (It follows a trumpet-playing robot created&#160; a year earlier, so perhaps a robot orchestra is in the making?) The company also has Robina, which is intended to serve as a guide in a public space. Toyota put it into use last year at a public hall in Japan and expects robots like Robina will be commercially realistic in the middle of the next decade.Taking on a much more serious role is Twendy One, a home-help robot developed by Tokyo&#39;s Waseda University. It can do many of the basic tasks that a frail person may need help with, such as&#160;assisting people out of bed and serving up toast and drinks.The robot is still under development but could have a bright future. Japan&#39;s population is aging fast--already, 22 percent of people are over 65--and the birth rate is slowing. That likely means a future shortage of workers. It&#39;s one of the reasons money is being poured into robot technology in this already technology-saturated nation.
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(InfoWorld) - Qualcomm is offering mobile phone makers a choice of technologies to tune into mobile TV services. In addition to its MediaFlo broadcast system, the U.S. manufacturer unveiled the development of two new chips supporting alternative technologies at last week'sÂ 3GSM World CongressÂ in Barcelona. Qualcomm is pushing its own MediaFlo system as an alternative to the DVB-H (Digital Video Broadcasting - Handheld) standard supported by Nokia and Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications, or the Japanese ISDB-T (Integrated Services Digital Broadcasting - Terrestrial) system. But in Spain, it unveiled a "universal" chip that supports all three technologies. The company has also developed a new chip that supports Multimedia Broadcast Multicast Service (MBMS). This technology allows mobile phone network operators to offer streamed mobile TV services more efficiently by multicasting programs instead of having to establish point-to-point links for each device as they currently do. As a result, operators will be able to position their streaming services more competitively to meet future demands of mobile TV users during peak live TV broadcasts, such as sporting events and breaking news. "A big advantage of MBMS is that the technology will help operators better utilize their networks,' said Nitesh Patel, senior analyst with Strategy Analytics Ltd. But a drawback could be the lack of commitment by handset manufacturers to make phones, he added. A key focus of Qualcomm, however, is to establish its own MediaFlo as the technology of choice for operators entering the nascent market for mobile TV services, according to Andrew Gilbert, president of Qualcomm Europe. "Nokia and others are pushing hard for DVB-H to be the mobile TV standard in Europe but MediaFlo has some significant advantages," Gilbert said in an interview. The results of its trail with British Sky Broadcasting (BSkyB) indicate that MediaFlo would be able to cover either twice the geographical area per transmitter or deliver double the number of channels as DVB-H, according to Gilbert. And channel switching times are faster, he said. Under Qualcomm's patent licence policy technology, proprietary MediaFlo technology can be licensed for use in CDMA (Code Division Multiplex Access) and WCDMA (Wideband-CDMA) phones with no increase in the company's standard royalty rate for these handsets. MediaFlo technology will run on any spectrum that national regulators make available to mobile TV services, according to Gilbert. If regulators initially showed more support for DVB-H, "they are more neutral today" and willing to consider alternative technologies such as MediaFlo, he said. Gilbert ruled out the DMB (Digital Media Broadcasting) standard as a viable alternative, pointing to its limited bandwidth capability. Some analysts agree. "Of the mobile TV standards out there, DMB is the weakest primarily because of its limited bandwidth, which reduces the number of channels and picture quality," Patel said. Unlike MediaFlo and DVB-H, however, the DMB standard uses spectrum currently available in numerous European markets. As such, it is enjoying a head-start advantage in countries like Germany, which issued DMB licenses prior to the World Cup soccer tournament last year. The German regulator has yet to set a time-frame for DVB-H. Momentum for MediaFlo is growing: On Feb. 12, the biggest U.S. cellular company, AT&T's Cingular division, announcedÂ plans to launch a mobile TV serviceÂ using MediaFlo technology later this year. Verizon Wireless, the country's second-largest mobile operator by subscribers, has already committed to using MediaFlo, with plans to offer commercial service in March. Â
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Japanese chips-to-computers conglomerate,  Fujitsu Ltd., said on Sunday it is in talks with Sharp Corp.,  the world's largest maker of LCD televisions, to sell its  loss-making LCD panel operations.
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NTT DoCoMo Inc (9437.T), Fuji Television  Network Inc. (4676.T), Nippon Broadcasting System Inc. (4660.T)  and other companies will team up to develop television shows  for mobile phones, the Nihon Keizai business daily reported on  Wednesday.
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(InfoWorld) - Smartphone users will be able to watch broadband television and snap high-resolution photos on their handsets in 2007 thanks to new processor and memory chips launched at theÂ 3GSM World Congress in Barcelona on Monday. Together with dropping prices, these chips will help spread smartphones from high-end business users to a larger mass-market audience, according to hardware component manufacturers attending the 3GSM show. Camera phones will get a boost in power by using high-resolution image sensors from Micron Technology. The company's new MT9-series sensors use a 1.75-micron pixel design in resolutions of up to 5 megapixels. The top-shelf version, MT9P012, captures video at 60 frames per second at 720p resolution or 30 fps at 1080p and will be ready for sampling in the second quarter of 2007 with mass production by the middle of the year. Likewise, OmniVision Technologies announced a 5.17-megapixel camera module for mobile handsets using the OV5623 CameraChip sensor. That sensor will help high-resolution camerasÂ enter the mainstream mobile handset market, the company said. To store those large photo files, SanDisk announced it had developed a high-capacity version of its iNAND embedded flash drive, capable of holding up to 8GB of data. The new drives are now compliant with JEDEC (joint electron device engineering council) standards, allowing phone vendors to use them in designs that demand enough storage for mobile TV, multimedia downloading, digital audio players, gaming, and GPS. Also supporting mobile television, Qualcomm said that its UBM (Universal Broadcast Modem) chip would ship ahead of schedule, delivering mobile TV capability to mass-market handsets. A single UBM chip contains three technology standards, including FLO technology, digital video broadcasting for handhelds, and integrated service digital broadcasting-terrestrial. Qualcomm also said it would boost mobile broadband by the end of 2007 by launching the Mobile Data Modem 8200, a chipset supporting the next generation of WCDMA (wideband code division multiple access). A smartphone using that chip could support mobile Internet browsing, real-time location services, and multimedia sharing, the company said. To support these capabilities without driving up retail prices, vendors say they need to increase the market size, so another feature of many chips launched at 3GSM was low cost. Broadcom launched its EDGE processor, integrating a radio frequency transceiver, baseband functions, and multimedia connectivity support on a single chip. That design lets phone vendors create slimmer designs, reduce power consumption, and control costs, Broadcom said. Likewise, Qualcomm said its Mobile Station Modem (MSM) 7225 chipset would allow vendors to sell broadband-capable smartphones for less than $200. The chipset uses a dual-processor architecture for high-speed downlink packet access. The company will ship samples in the third quarter of 2007 and expects vendors to bring it to market by the first quarter of 2008. Microsoft said it had another way to open up larger markets for smartphones, adding desktop-quality features to handsets, such as VoIP calls and faster e-mail traffic with higher-quality graphics. Microsoft launchedÂ Windows Mobile 6, its latest OS for mobile handsets, and said it expected a crop of smartphones using the OS to reach market in March or April. Marvell Technology Group pledged to help that migration by announcing it would support the new OS on its PXA300-series processors. Those chips were formerly known as "Monahans" until Marvell bought the division from Intel in 2006. Â
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Panasonic steps out for CES keynote presentation in a big way, unveiling a 150-inch display it calls the Life Screen.
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TOKYO, SEPT 6: Panasonic brand products maker Matsushita Electric Industrial Co said on Monday it will launch the world&#39;s largest plasma display television, with a screen measuring 65-inches diagonally, on Oct 1 in Japan.
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The Twentieth Century Fox studio, a veteran of the big screen and the TV screen, is about to break into an entirely new realm: the really little screen, the kind that comes on a cell phone.
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Japan's Sharp Corp. said on Tuesday it had developed a 65-inch liquid crystal display (LCD) television, the world's biggest, in a bid to break into the large flat-panel TV market dominated by plasma display (PDP) makers.
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(InfoWorld) - The experience of watching television or video clips on mobile phones may improve with a new screen being developed by LG.Philips LCD Co. The company has developed a new TFT-LCD (thin-film transistor-liquid crystal display) panel for mobile phones that has better response times than similar screens in use today, it announced Thursday. Faster response times help to eliminate the after-images and ghosting that can appear on LCD screens, leading to sharper, better quality video. The 2-inch display has a 16 millisecond response time, compared to 25 milliseconds for today's typical phone screen, LG.Philips said. The screen will be ideal for phones that can receive TV broadcasts or connect to broadband wireless networks for downloading videos. LG.Philips developed a different technology from that used in its notebook PC panels, to meet the power consumption demands of mobile phones. LG.Philips expects to start mass producing the new display this year. It came out of a new unit the company launched in January to develop smaller displays. That unit is now working on a display that uses IPS (in-plane switching), a technology typically used in larger displays that increases the viewing angle. Mobile phones need to be increasingly capable as operators upgrade their networks to offer higher-speed connections. The new services create a need for better screens, faster chips and more memory capacity. Just last week Samsung Electronics Co.Â said it had developed a new technology toÂ make screens on handheld devices brighter, even in broad daylight. It measures the ambient light available and adjusts the brightness of the screen accordingly. The technology is expected in handsets later this year. Â
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Newest HDTV is the largest such device designed for consumers, company claims.
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Texas Instruments Inc. has begun  developing a chip that could bring television shows to mobile  phone screens in three years.
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Electronics maker unveils an 80-inch plasma display TV.
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S750 slider phone boasts 320 x 240 LCD, 1.3Mp digicam
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The race is on to come up with the world&#39;s thinnest cell phone screen. On Tuesday, both Japan&#39;s Sharp and Taiwan&#39;s AU Optronics Corp. (AUO) said they had developed prototype displays that are less than a millimeter thick.The Sharp LCD (liquid crystal display) measures 2.2-inches across the diagonal and is just 0.68 millimeters thick making it the thinnest cell phone screen in the world, the company said Tuesday. Coming in just behind in the AUO screen, which is a 1.9-inch model that&#39;s just 0.69 millimeters thick.The screens used in most of today&#39;s phones are on-average between 1.5 millimeters and 2.5 millimeters thick so the new Sharp screen is significantly thinner, said Miyuki Nakayama, a spokeswoman for Sharp in Tokyo.Sharp is coy about just how it managed to reduce the thickness but said innovations lay in two major areas: improvements in production technology that enable the use of thinner glass sheet and a reduction in the thickness of the backlight that sits behind the screen.Thinner cell phone screens are good news for consumers because they allow phone makers to either produce slimmer phones or to pack more technology into the same size space. Some recent models of cell phone have been getting larger in-part because of the addition of new features like digital TV tuners and smartcards.However there&#39;s no word from Sharp on when the screen might start appearing in cell phones. The company is currently in talks with cell phone makers and hasn&#39;t decided when it will start production, said Nakayama.The svelte screens will get their unveiling at FPD Expo, which runs from Wednesday to Friday in Yokohama, Japan.
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Fujitsu Siemens Computers has introduced a line of "professional" notebook computers that include 3G mobile connectivity.