Japanese Co. Markets Dual-Network Phone
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Japan&#39;s top mobile carrier has begun marketing a cell phone that can make Internet calls over Wi-Fi wireless networks in addition to regular ones.
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You'll still be able to get a cell phone with Sanyo's name on it, if that's what you want. But now, the troubled Japanese electronics manufacturer will be selling its mobile phone business to Kyocera for around $374 million.
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At Computerworld's Mobile & Wireless World conference, IT managers from Marriott said theyre evaluating the possible use of dual-mode phones supporting both Wi-Fi and cellular services.
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Japanese electronics giants NEC Corp. and Panasonic Mobile Communications said they have jointly developed a Linux-based software platform which offers third-generation mobile phones-users more services on their handsets.
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j2 Global lets users bring their existing numbers to its electronic fax service.
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NTT DoCoMo, Japan's biggest mobile carrier, may offer a cell phone based on Google's Android platform.
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A new joint-venture wireless telephony company will provide regional mobile infrastructure and a common service platform to some 56 million customers across the Asia-Pacific region.
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NTT DoCoMo and Motorola have announced a deal to jointly develop a third-generation handset for business users, marking the American company&#39;s first major foray into the lucrative Japanese mobile phone market.
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Shipments of cell phones compatible with Japan's mobile digital TV service have surged to more than 20 million units in fewer than two years since launch, according to industry data released Wednesday.
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Company invites developers to tweak hardware and software for Internet phone service launched earlier in year.
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Anti-virus protection will ship later this month with some new phones in Japan, a harbinger of cellular threats to come. Security products are already available for handheld
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NTT DoCoMo will release a handset compatible with non-Japanese cellular networks and with its own 3G (third generation) mobile network early next year.
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It&#39;s easy to be wowed by Japan&#39;s mobile communications infrastructure. &quot;Next-generation&quot; 3G coverage is now so ubiquitous that carriers have already stopped launching 2G phones; an impressive array of attractive handsets offer free digital TV; phones can be used to pay for goods and train rides, thanks to embedded contactless smart cards; and on the mobile information superhighway data whizzes along at 3.6Mbps. But watch out for the off-ramps.While Japan has led the world with many of the services offered to consumers, in some ways the mobile ecosystem here is downright backward as I found out last weekend when I tried to buy a new phone. A broken handset necessitated a new model and this is where my story begins.In Japan, phones are sold by carriers and not the phone makers. Companies like Fujitsu, NEC, Sony Ericsson, and a few foreign vendors including Nokia, Samsung, and LG sell their phones in the thousands to carriers. This gives carriers the ability to pretty much dictate to the phone maker what software needs to be installed.This model is one of the reasons that mobile Internet services like I-mode took off here so quickly. There was no chicken-and-egg situation with phone makers and users waiting for each other to take the plunge. NTT DoCoMo decided I-mode would be in new phones and so it was.But this model has a downside. Phones are so tightly customized to each carrier that it&#39;s not practical to keep the same handset when switching carriers, and if you see a phone you like you can only buy it if it&#39;s offered by your carrier.Back to my story. The new phone was looking quite expensive so I decided to switch carriers and take advantage of a free phone on a competitor network. Japan launched number portability a year ago, so I could make the jump without losing my cell-phone number. I&#39;d still have the hassle of a new e-mail address, but it appeared a small price to pay.Before long I had a new phone in my hands, but my phone numbers remained locked in the old handset. The new carrier didn&#39;t have a cable to hook up to my old phone so they couldn&#39;t transfer the address book and it wasn&#39;t possible to beam it between the phones. While my old carrier was gung-ho on Bluetooth, my new carrier wasn&#39;t so enthusiastic, so the new phone had no support. Similarly, while the new phone offered infrared, the old phone didn&#39;t. Heavy customization strikes again.Back home I fired up my PC and managed to get my address book from the old phone into the computer. Getting it to the new phone via a memory card seemed like an easy task ... but no! The VCard file wasn&#39;t being properly read by the new phone. Carriers, it was explained to me when I called the help line, often used custom fields in their VCards so there were sometimes problems. So much for a common standard.I won&#39;t bore you with the technicalities of how I eventually got my address book into my new phone, but suffice to say this story has a happy ending. I&#39;m now back in cruise control, enjoying all the attractions the mobile superhighway has to offer.The number portability system that enabled me to keep my phone number is coincidentally one-year-old this week. About 3 percent of users in Japan -- roughly 3.7 million people -- have made use of the system during its first year -- far less than the industry predicted, or feared.One thing that&#39;s said to be stopping users from switching is the inability to keep their e-mail addresses. While carriers fussed over the details of keeping numbers, they forgot, or perhaps ignored, the need to carry e-mail addresses between carriers. In other countries this wouldn&#39;t be a big deal because most messaging is done via SMS, which relies on phone numbers, but in Japan the advanced stage of the market has again caused hassle for consumers.
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Increasing NTT DoCoMo&#39;s reach outside Japan, the Japanese carrier has partnered with Motorola to build a 3G FOMA phone that also does GSM/GPRS.
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United States cellphone operators are flirting with selling handsets that feature their names exclusively.
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Japan's NTT DoCoMo Inc. (9437.T), Fuji  Television Network Inc. (4676.T), Nippon Broadcasting System  Inc. and other firms will team up to develop new broadcast  services for cellphones, the companies said on Wednesday.
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An adapter made by Siemens allows phones to make calls using the Internet or the traditional phone network.