Guess you’ve all heard Nokia is leaving Japan, leaving only its luxury handset division Vertu behind. Well, due to such decision by the Finnish giant, the leading Japanese mobile operator, NTT DoCoMo, announced that it has cancelled its planned launch of the Nokia E71. In November, DoCoMo announced Nokia’s QWERTY keyboard-equipped smartphone along with 21…
DoCoMo’s Android handset to be 20% cheaper than other smartphones
Japanese carrier NTT DoCoMo has elaborated on the Android handset due to drop in 2009 announced in October. South Korean service provider, KTF, will also be carrying the device, purportedly for 20% less than the usual cost of smartphones due to savings from using Google’s free operating system. We had already seen what doors are…
NTT DoCoMo to release 22 (!) phones by March
Holy crap. Who does that? Seriously! Twenty-two handsets in one batch? That’s just crazy-talk. Well, it’s not really one batch – these phones will be released between now and March in Japan through NTT DoCoMo, but that is still one helluva release schedule. Here’s the whole lineup, broken into subcategories, with release dates. Style series…
NTT Docomo purchaces 26% of Indian carrier’s common shares
Japanese carrier NTT Docomo is stretching westards towards India by entering into a strategic alliance with Tata Teleservices. For US$2.7 billion Docomo bought 26% of TTSL’s common shares as a part of the deal. Tata Teleservices had sparked a whole review of national security last spring when they tried to start supporting BlackBerry services, but…
NTT DoCoMo working on HSUPA handset
Japanese carrier NTT DoCoMo is working with Fujitsu, Sharp and Reneas to make an HSUPA-compatible handset for a 2010 release. The SH-Mobile G4 will boast 5.7 Mbps uplink speeds, which is quite the jump from our current 384kbps. HSUPA is the Yin to HSDPA’s Yang – offering upload speeds that match download. HSDPA is considerably…
Android coming to Japan in 2009
In an effort to stave off competition from KDDI and Softbank, Japanese carrier NTT DoCoMo has announced that Android will have a spot among the ten smartphones they aim to release next year. Due within the first half of 2009, there’s no word if it will be the same G1 launched on T-Mobile two weeks…
DoCoMo handset takes cue from magician assistant, sepearates in two
Probably the coolest thing out of CEATEC is this new, fully-functional separating phone from NTT DoCoMo dubbed appropriately Separate Keitai (handset). By communicating via Bluetooth, you can pull this phone apart and keep talking on one end while doing business on the other. Magnets make it highly reconfigurable and provide some very imaginative possibilities. The…
BlackBerry Bold coming to Japan early 2009
While it might feel like it’s taking awhile for the BlackBerry 9000 to hit American shores, Japan isn’t slated to get the Bold until early 2009 through NTT DoCoMo. The orient has proven to be a tricky market for RIM, with language, cultural and competitive barriers to overcome, but the BlackBerry Bold is a big…
Fujitsu does LTE deal with NTT DoCoMo
Fujitsu has been chosen by NTT DoCoMo to be a supplier of the core networking systems (EPC, or “Evolved Packet Core”) for the next-gen LTE (4G) network. This follows a 2006 deal for Fujitsu to develop and manufacture the wireless base stations and handsets for the network. The new systems will integrate with Nokia hardware…
Mobiles phones to lock/unlock and start cars?
Yep, that’s if Sharp, NTT DoCoMo, and Nissan have anything to do with it! Sharp and DoCoMo have apparently developed a Mobile phone that also works as an electronic key for Nissan cars. It incorporates Nissan’s “intelligent key system”, which is standard on some existing cars – something like 950,000 of them since 2002. We’ve…