Samsung is teaming up with Tata Teleservices’ GSM brand ‘Tata DOCOMO’ to launch some Android love in India. I haven’t been able to find specifics on the initial device to be launched, but from what I’ve read it’ll be similar to the Samsung Galaxy that has seen air time in other areas of the world. Look for it to become available on Tata DOCOMO for Rs 28,990 (~$600 USD) with 500MB of data for six months. Other devices will be coming down the tube in India as well, as Samsung India Electronics General Manager of Marketing Asim Warsi noted:

“This is first of the block. There would be more this year. Android is a very serious operating system on which we will build more phones…”

Early days on this one, stay tuned for more.

[Via: IndiaTimes]

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• Select T-Mobile G1 European Release Dates Announced… As Suspected.

This is one of those things that makes you go “hmmm, why didn’t anyone else think of that?!” Indian mobile operator Tata Docomo, which only launched this summer, is going to start charging you by the amount of letters/numbers you use in a text message, rather than per text message. Ever wanted to tell someone “OK” but didn’t want to waste the money for a whole text message? This service is for you. The prices are extraordinarily cheap, at only 1 paise per character. The paise is what you and I would call a cent; 100 paise = 1 rupee. That translates to 3.3 American cents for a perfect 160 character text message. In case you’re wondering, they are not going to charge for a space.

[Via: Textually]

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Japan’s NTT DoCoMo (NYSE: DCM) has announced that there are now 10 million subscribers using their credit payment service – DCMX. The success came from several factors including popularization of Osaifu-Keitai and iD reader/writer terminals, as well as an introduction of a customer loyalty program.

Currently, there are about 30 million DoCoMo customers who use Osaifu-Keitai-compatible handsets, and about 420,000 iD readers/writers nationwide, as of July 31, 2009. The service is used at such places as shopping malls, electronics retailers, restaurants and even taxis.

DCMX exists in three “flavors”: DCMX mini, the standard “DCMX” plan and the premium “DCMX GOLD” plan. Subscribers of the standard DCMX and DCMX GOLD plans can earn DoCoMo’s loyalty points each time they make a purchase. Later on, these points can be used for DoCoMo product discounts and other customer rewards.

For the record, DCMX was launched in April 2006, and has reached 1 million subscribers in November 2006. In February 2008, there 5 million people were using it, and now, just three years and four months since launch, the number climbed to 10 million. Impressive!

[Via: CellularNews]

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Japan’s DoCoMo has confirmed that it is interested in buying a mobile network in Cambodia. The country has several operators which could be suitable targets, including Millicom’s local subsidiary.

At present, the Japanese company is in the midst of considering political and economic risks, according to Toshinari Kunieda, senior vice president and managing director of DoCoMo’s global business. “It’s like a marriage proposal — you don’t make an offer the day after falling in love at first sight, you look at other potential partners, too,” he added.

Cambodia ended last year with around 3.77 million mobile phone subscribers spread across 7 active mobile operators, representing a population penetration level of 26%.

Finally, Cambodia is not the only country where DoCoMo is eyeing investments. The operator is also seeking to invest in Vietnam, Indonesia, Thailand and China; and it already owns 26% of India’s Tata Teleservices, 30% of Bangladesh’s Aktel and 16.5% of Malaysia’s U-Mobile.

[Via: CellularNews]

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NEC and Panasonic (NYSE: PC) have introduced nine new LiMo handsets through Japanese carrier NTT DoCoMo (NYSE: DCM), spread across three families. In the PRIME series, we have the N-06A, P-07A and N-07A; in the STYLE series there’s the N-08A, P-06A, P-08A, and P-10A; and finally the SMART series is including the N-09A and the P-09A. No fresh additions to the PRO series, which usually hosts some of the more exotic (by their standards) handsets, like the BlackBerry (NSDQ: RIMM) Bold, HTC Magic and Touch Pro.  As usual, tha majority of these new handsets come off as blockish, cheap-looking flips, but don’t be fooled – many are rocking TV tuners, 7.2 Mbps, GPS, WVGA displays – hell, three of them have 8.1 megapixel cameras.  With this release, the number of LiMo-compliant handsets goes up to 42 – a solid lead on its brother-in-Linuxosity, Android, although when it comes to hardware, the next year is looking busy for Google (NSDQ: GOOG)’s mobile platform.

[via LiMo Foundation]

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Devices that are announced by NTT docomo (NYSE: DCM), that mobile phone fanbois like yourselves read about, are like mythical unicorns. People talk about them, but no one really sees them. Today another unicorn left the factory, the SH-08A. The clamshell measures 109 x 50 x 17.3 mm (21 mm at the thickest point) and weighs 140 grams. It has a 3 inch screen with a 480 x 854 pixel resolution that can render 16.7 million colors. It also has an 8 megapixel CCD camera, can be submerged in up to 1 meter of water, and a large solar panel on top gives it 1 minute of talk time for every 10 minutes in the sun. We’re never going to see this unicorn, but dreaming about it is OK.

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Porn. Go anywhere in the world and you’ll find porn going strong. Go to Japan, however, and you you’ll find that mobile porn consumption is straining wireless data networks to the max. With more and more Japanese mobile subscribers opting for unlimited data plans, the mobile phone is starting to replace the desktop PC in porn consumption. In fact, the demand for mobile porn over 3G data networks has become so extreme that Japan’s top two wireless carriers, DoCoMo and KDDI, are looking to limit heavy data users in a bid to manage the load on their 3G networks.

It’s fitting that porn is forcing carriers to deal with data traffic surges. Porn was the deciding factor in the VHS vs. BetaMax format wars. Porn recently helped decide the Bluray vs HD DVD format war. Now, it seems porn is going to be the driving force behind wireless carriers’ management of unlimited data plans. “Pornography will eventually open a debate about how carriers should modify their business model as data traffic swells,” said Yusuke Tsunoda, telecommunications analyst for Tokai Tokyo Securities Co. “It may prompt even tighter access restrictions.”

As handsets become more advanced and wireless data networks get faster speeds, the mobile porn problem is only going to get worse. As it stands, some wireless subscribers have complained of slow or dropped data connections around midnight (hmm, why would that be?) on KDDI’s network. The surge in data traffic is simply too much for the Japanese carrier’s network to handle, despite the fact that Japanese wireless operators spent approximately $74 billion in infrastructure build-out costs since 2000.

It should be interesting to see how carriers react to porno-fueled traffic spikes and over-consumption on unlimited data plans. That “unlimited” data plan of yours is already capped to a handful of GB’s, we wouldn’t be surprised to see that carriers imposing more drastic caps in the near future. Let’s hope 4G LTE networks help alleviate the porno-bandwidth problem to some extent.

[Via: Bloomberg]

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NTT docomo (NYSE: DCM) just launched the HT-03A in Japan, better known as the HTC Magic, and no one really even noticed according to Wireless Watch Japan. It’s shipping in the land of the rising sun for $300 on a 2 year contract, and it even comes with an extra battery since the locals are afraid it isn’t going to last a whole day. It’s no surprise the Japanese don’t care about this thing. It doesn’t have mobile TV, it doesn’t have NFC, it doesn’t have a lot of the things that the Japanese market has been enjoying for past few years while European and American mobile phone nerds masturbate furiously waiting to see something even remotely similar in their local shops.

I’ll take a SH-07A thank you very much.

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PacketVideo makes software for viewing video on your mobile handset, and they just became $45.5 million richer after Japanese operator NTT DOCOMO (NYSE: DCM) purchased a 35% stake in the company. NTT DOCOMO has already shipped 90 handsets with their software on board; now as an investor, they may have their say into the future direction of the company and a reduction on royalty fees.

Toshio Miki, Associate Senior Vice President, Managing Director of Communication Device Development Department for NTT DOCOMO, said: “PacketVideo has been a key supplier of software to DOCOMO and has made important contributions to the success of our services in the Japanese market. We are pleased to become an equity partner of PacketVideo and are very confident of the company’s continued growth and long-term success.”

James Brailean, Ph.D., CEO of PacketVideo said: “We are honored to welcome DOCOMO as an investor. We are building on our unique and highly successful relationship with DOCOMO to further strengthen PacketVideo’s position in developing the best in class media experience, regardless of format or platform. PacketVideo is the global leader in delivering rich media solutions for mobile operators, and DOCOMO’s support will enable us to accelerate our innovation and growth.”

For what it’s worth: PacketVideo is also a member of the Open Handset Alliance

[Via: NTT DOCOMO and NewTeeVee]

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NTT DoCoMo (NYSE: DCM) is joining the mobile money market with its own remittance service. Starting from July 21st, individual users (as opposed to corporate customers) of the carrier’s i-mode service will be able to remit up to 20,000 yen (about $208) per transfer by simply inputting the payee’s mobile phone number. The payee then receives a mail notification on its mobile phone and is given the option of depositing the money in a domestic bank account or having the amount credited to their monthly phone bill. The payee can receive remittances totaling up to 200,000 yen (about $2,080) per month.

Best of all, the service doesn’t require any registration or opening of a specific bank account!

Cost wise, the charges per payment (including consumption tax) will be 105 yen for the payer and 65 yen for the payee. The payee is not charged, however, if the remittance is deposited into a Mizuho Bank account or credited to their monthly phone bill.

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NTT DoCoMo (NYSE: DCM) announced that its European subsidiary, DoCoMo Netherlands, has launched Europe’s first mobile service for downloading Japanese Manga comics.

The service called MANGA MODE will initially launch in France, and is expected to appeal to the growing number of Manga lovers in the country.

Customers of Bouygues Telecom will be able to use the service to download French translations of famous manga comics into their mobile phones and view them panel by panel using a dedicated reader app. Bouygues Telecom has posted a dedicate page on its mobile web portal from where customers can sign-up for the service…

[Via: slashphone]

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What happens when you combine Tata Teleservices with NTT DoCoMo (NYSE: DCM)? Well, it’s obvious, at least now – Tata DoCoMo. And that’s exactly the new name of the GSM operator owned by Tata Group and partly (26%) by the Japanese leading mobile operator.

The new brand along with the new website was developed by the Business and Technology Cooperation Committee that DOCOMO and TTSL have jointly established, and it symbolizes “the two companies’ strong partnership.”

Tata is already one of the leading operators in India’s ever-growing mobile market, and plans to further expand to southern parts of the country this month and gradually nationwide.

[Via: Engadget Mobile]

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The ravishing TG01 from Toshiba (OTCPK: TOSBF) will be landing in Spain by way of Telefonica (NYSE: TEF) and Japan through NTT DoCoMo (NYSE: DCM) between June and July. It wasn’t long ago that O2 (NYSE: TEF) made the same announcement for Germany, but what about North America? No love just yet? We’ve had a brief glimpse of the sequel handsets, which will also be running on Qualcomm (NSDQ: QCOM)’s impressive 1Ghz Snapdragon chip – maybe we’ll see them locally here in Canada and the U.S. while the TG01 makes its rounds on the other side of the pond. The specs for the TG01, if you haven’t seen them, are quite impressive:

• Quad-band GSM, HSPA, WiFi, Bluetooth, GPS
• 4.1-inch WVGA (480×800 pixels) touchscreen
• 256MB of RAM coupled with 512MB of ROM
• 3.2 megapixel camera with autofocus
• A scant 9.9mm thick
• Windows Mobile 6.1, with 6.5 likely on the way

[via PR Inside]

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Four Japanese mobile operators will spend 1 trillion yen ($10 billion) during the next five years to build a next-gen mobile network with faster Internet speeds.

According to Nikkei – NTT DoCoMo (NYSE: DCM), KDDI, Softbank (OTCPK: SFTBF) and Emobile will apply to the government for licenses for the new standard (LTE?) by May 7. DoCoMo plans to launch the new network during next year, while three other players will do the same between 2011 and 2012.

As for the rest of the world, we can only hope carriers elsewhere will follow the Japanese example and at least start planning their networks during the next year.

[Via: Bloomberg]

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In the hip world of design, ergonomics is king. We see ergonomic design in computer mice made to fit your hand or chairs made to conform to your supple rump, but a new  audio technology from NTT DoCoMo (NYSE: DCM) promises to bring ergonomic audio to the mobile space. NTT DoCoMo’s new “spatial audio transmission technology” allows the mobile user to arrange multiple callers in a virtual audio field – so you hear your conference-calling co-worker as if he were sitting next to you, with your boss’s voice seemingly coming to you from across the table.

Ergonomic hearing technology just makes sense. We routinely distinguish between multiple voices in a crowded room just by listening to their apparent position, but phone calls have been slow to key in on this natural human ability. NTT DoCoMo’s breakthrough takes fits the way we hear multiple sound sources, just as that expensive mesh-chair fits the way your body sits.

The spatial audio tech requires that the user wear headphones in order to “hear each speaker’s voice as if it were coming from a unique direction, creating a virtual face-to-face communication environment.” The technology reduces processing overhead by combining the encoding/decoding and spatial processing of the audio sources. Future mobile phones and network servers will work hand-in-hand to deliver audio encoded with NTT DoCoMo’s spatial audio information.

Conference calls have the most to benefit from NTT DoCoMo’s breakthrough, but applications in tele-education and online gaming are intriguing possibilities for this audio technology. The tech will debut during the Wireless Technology Park 2009 at Pacifico Yokohama on May 12 and 13.

Press release

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NTT DoCoMo (NYSE: DCM) will be offering Japan’s first Android device this year. It will be HTC Magic, prepacked and optimized for the Japanese market. That said, DoCoMo will offer the all-touchscreen device as the HT-03A.

As expected, it will run Android 1.5 (aka Cupcake) and will most likely have additional software built-in to suit DoCoMo customers’ needs.

Release date is unknown and the same goes for pricing. As soon as we hear something new, we’ll let you know, k?

[Via: Unwired View]

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A low-end texter I could understand having some temperature problems, but the illustrious BlackBerry (NSDQ: RIMM) Bold? Why, I never…! Japanese carrier NTT DoCoMo (NYSE: DCM) has pulled the BlackBerry Bold off shelves due to overheating issues, after having put the smartphone on them only last week. It’s not a battery issue apparently, so we can rule out explosive fatalities on that front; rather, it’s the keyboard that’s heating up, according to 30 of the 4,000 purchasers last week. If you got your Bold anywhere else, you shouldn’t have to worry, though.

“This issue appears to be specifically limited to the BlackBerry Bold devices sold in Japan since last week and sales of BlackBerry Bold devices in other countries are unaffected by this matter,” RIM said in a statement.

Whether this has to do with the camera-less variant or the extra 3G band crammed in there is as yet undetermined. The official announcement for the 9000 came back in September, with official timelines locked in in November. Hopefully it won’t take long for this heat problem to get sorted – it would be just plain cruel to deprive the Japanese of such a fine handset.

[via Reuters]

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According to pcworld.com, NTT DoCoMo (NYSE: DCM) has said it will switch off it’s 2G network in 2012.

DoCoMo was the first to launch 3G services in 2001, and released the last 2G phone in 2004 – so you can can almost visualise the curves in the finance graph that helped them decide! Another very persuasive stat must have been that by Dec ‘08, 88% of the 54mn subs were on the 3G network.

Interestingly, their 3G network is WCDMA-based (almost, but not quite, the world standard for 3G) – but their 2G network was a homebrew PDC ’standard’, that NTT developed – however this never gained any traction other than in the domestic market.

Imagining that finance graph that shows 2G dropping away, and 3G maturing, you’ve got to wonder if there is a third line on there – for their 4G and/or 5G services of course!

[Via: pcworld.com]

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NEC is presenting four handsets at the upcoming Mobile World Congress in two weeks, all based on the 22-phone lineup scheduled to be wrapped up by March. The Prime N-01A is a multi-configurable touchscreen device with 3.2 inch VGA screen, 5.2 megapixel camera with advanced face detection and auto focus and SRS TruMedia for virtual surround-sound.

The Style N-02A closely resembles the N-03A, the prime difference is that the N-03A was designed by (apparently) famous French Pastry Chef Pierre Herme. Wow, really? A phone designed by a pastry chef? The N-03A will come appropriately preloaded with a bunch of “gourmet content”. The N-02A is a little more business, featuring mobile TV, 5.2 megapixel camera, face detection and 15 different key illuminations for various kinds of alerts. Finally, the Smart N-04A is a global roaming phone with 3G and mobile TV in a slider form factor.

[via NEC]

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We’re not all that keen on covering the Japanese world of high-style feature phones, what with them never seeing the light of day outside Japan’s borders. Call it jealously if you want, but it’s just easier to not think about the cool WiBro and electronic wallet technologies that those Japanese feature phones are rocking these days.

So, it’s with great pleasure that we bring you the first ever NTT DoCoMo (NYSE: DCM) handset to launch outside of the island nation. The Fujitsu (OTCPK: FJTSY) F905i has been launched by NTT DoCoMo’s strategic partner carrier Far EasTone in Taiwan, and sports Taiwanese character support and works with the carrier’s i-mode data network.

Like it’s NTT DoCoMo forebear, the Fujitsu FOMA F905i, the Fujitsu F905i sports a 3.2-inch WVGA display, 3.2 megapixel camera, and Fujitsu’s proprietary audio technology. And, with a sleek clamshell design, the F905i is sure to bring a spoonful of joy to tech-hungry mobile enthusiasts in Taiwan.

[Via: UnwiredView]

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