IntoMobile » Fujitsu

Fujitsu wants in on the American smartphone market

George Tinari — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 22:40:44 +0000

Currently a leading smartphone manufacturer in Japan, Fujitsu is now looking for the most suitable way to enter the North American smartphone market. Fujitsu makes both Android and Windows Phone devices and that’s not about to change. A unique approach to hardware could be enough to gain prominence in a very crowded and complex territory, and that’s exactly what Fujitsu is aiming to do.

“If we try to do same thing as how our competitors because of the competition, it is going to be tough,” said Hideyuki Saso, Senior Executive Vice President of Fujitsu in an interview at CES 2012. “We would like to identify the right way of entering the North American market that would make use of our technology and expertise to make a steady landing.”

He then added that Fujitsu should be “special” to set itself apart from competitors. The company is exploring different ways to accomplish this, such as releasing a line of durable, waterproof smartphones without sacrificing stylish design.

At any rate, heading into the North American smartphone market won’t be an easy task. Apple, Samsung, HTC, Motorola, RIM, LG, and Nokia are a few of the plethora of smartphone manufacturers actively shipping units in the U.S. With carriers trying (and failing) to buy up carriers and constant wars between manufacturers, it has become more competitive than the 2012 presidential race.

[via AllThingsD]

Fujitsu has a quad core smartphone at CES, but isn’t letting anyone touch it

Stefan Constantinescu — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 09:18:02 +0000

At the start of each year, as the technology community looks back to what’s happened during the past 12 months, publications like to say things like “2011 was the year that Android caught up” or “2011 was another failed year for Microsoft’s Windows Phone”. We didn’t really do that this year since so much happened that it was difficult for even us to wrap our heads around everything, but one thing is certain, nearly every smartphone that was worth caring about came with a dual core processor. From the Samsung Galaxy S II that was announced last February and eventually came to America during the summer, to the iPhone 4S that came out in November, and then finally the Galaxy Nexus in December, 2011 was all about dual core handsets. Fujitsu thinks they can do better and at CES this year they showed off a quad core smartphone. The device doesn’t yet have a name, and no one was allowed to touch it, but we do have a spec sheet: 1.2 GHz NVIDIA Tegra 3, 4.6 inch 720p resolution screen, 13 megapixel camera, and 4G LTE connectivity.

Fujitsu says this mysterious device will be shown off in a more final form during Mobile World Congress next month, but we’ve got to wonder if it’s too much too soon? NVIDIA would like to make you believe that having four cores is better than having two cores, but they’re making the same mistake that Intel made at the turn of the century with the Pentium 4. Back then Intel believed that the only way to get more computing power from a processor was to ramp up the clock speed, whereas their closest competitor AMD came out with a much more efficient architecture that could achieve the same benchmark results at a much lower clock rate. Intel eventually mimicked AMD’s strategy, and we’re likely to see the same thing happen in mobile.

Qualcomm is going to come out with next generation cores that are more efficient than their previous generation cores. Samsung and Texas Instruments have already announced that they’ll be making chips based on ARM’s next generation Cortex A15. So do four cores matter? In the end the market will decide, but in today’s world we think no, they don’t.

KDDI’s Fujitsu Arrow ES IS12F takes the crown from Moto RAZR for the world’s thinnest smartphone spot

Dusan Belic — Mon, 05 Dec 2011 11:09:42 +0000

The Motorola RAZR isn’t the world’s thinnest smartphone anymore. Sure it will keep its crown in the western hemisphere but in Japan folks have another, even thinner option – Fujitsu Arrow ES IS12F. Available through KDDI, this Android smartphone is just 6.7mm think which is 0.4mm thinner than Moto’s smartphone.

However, Fujitsu’s baby isn’t as powerful as RAZR – it comes with a single-core 1.4GHz processor and smaller 4-inch WVGA 800×480 pixels (as opposed to qHD 960×540 pixels) AMOLED touchscreen. In addition, there’s also a 5-megapixel camera on the back, dual-mode (CDMA and GSM) connectivity for global roaming, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 2.1+EDR and a solid 1,400mAh battery. Moreover, Japan-specific features also come built in, including 1-Seg mobile TV, Infrared and mobile wallet capability that enables contactless payments.

The Fujitsu Arrow ES IS12F will be available in January and we doubt it will ever be available outside of the Land of the rising Sun…

[Via: theverge]

Fujitsu Arrows Kiss F-03D is a fancy Android smartphone for Japanese ladies

Dusan Belic — Wed, 23 Nov 2011 10:25:02 +0000

Lady phones are not that popular in most parts of the world. Japan is sort of an exception as major carriers are always trying to have a special offering for the tech-savvy ladies.

NTT DoCoMo launched such a device, Fujitsu Arrows Kiss F-03D, that not only looks girly, but also comes with some apps that make it easier for its users to get around the day. The Android smartphone sports such pre-installed apps like Beauty Body Clinic that monitors your posture, Sukkiri Alarm that wakes you when it thinks you’re ready and Karada Life, which is a pedometer app offering health advice.

Specs wise, Fujitsu’s baby rocks Qualcomm’s single-core 1.4GHz processor, 3.7-inch WVGA touchscreen, 8.1-megapixel camera, OneSeg mobile TV, mobile wallet capability and the Okudake-Juden wireless charging system. Price is unknown at this stage but we know the Arrows Kiss F-03D will be released on November 25th. And I doubt it will ever be available outside of the Land of the rising Sun.

[Via: Engadget]

6.7 mm thick Fujitsu Arrows F-07D hits the FCC, Motorola Droid RAZR starts purging regularly

Stefan Constantinescu — Tue, 22 Nov 2011 08:48:22 +0000

The Motorola Droid RAZR is impossibly thin, measuring just 7.1 mm at its thinnest point, but it’s now officially considered obese thanks to the 6.7 mm thin Fujitsu Arrows F-07D. The Arrows will probably never leave Japan, which is a shame, but at least it demonstrates that building thin smartphones isn’t exactly impossible. Spec wise, the Arrows is an inferior device compared to the RAZR. It has a single core 1.4 GHz processor (RAZR has a dual core 1.2 GHz processor), 4 inch 854 x 480 pixel display (RAZR has a 4.3 inch 960 x 540 pixel display), 5 megapixel camera (RAZR does 8 megapixels), and it only does 14 Mbps down (RAZR has LTE support). Design wise, we can’t help but feel that Fujitsu copied LG’s Optimus Black. It’s got the same boring brick look with slightly rounded corners and it also has a painfully glossy body. Just look at the video below, the guy demoing the device has to wear cotton gloves:

The bigger question here is why are we making such thin phones in the first place? As our smartphones get faster and faster, and come with larger and larger screens, doesn’t it make sense to sacrifice a few millimeters to throw in a good battery? Case in point, for a long time Nokia’s 1500 mAh battery was considered the biggest thing in town, but now nearly everyone throws 1600 mAh to 1800 mAh batteries inside their devices, all the while they remain 9 mm thick. They do that thanks to making larger, but thinner batteries. Would it kill people to have a 10 mm or even 12 mm thick device if it’s guaranteed to go 2 days with heavy use?

Next year we’re going to see the first devices based on TSMC’s 28 nanometer process hit the market, notably the Qualcomm S4 stuff in early 2012 and then the Tegra 3 refresh in late 2012. That’ll help with the power problem, but we can’t help but feel that it’s simply easier for handset vendor to simply just use a bigger battery.

[Additional reading: NTT DoCoMo]