Handsets

DUBLIN, Ireland—Cellular operators need to market mobile entertainment applications more aggressively if many more games applications developers are not to go out of business. This is the view of international …

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BEIJING—Qualcomm Chairman and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Irwin Jacobs expects China Unicom’s CDMA network to have 3 to 4 million users by the end of the year. Subscribers are slow …

AMSTERDAM, The Netherlands—The GSM Association and the Bluetooth Special Interest Group Inc. say they are working together to educate their members on the applications that will accrue from interoperating both …

Permit issues could delay operator rollouts HELSINKI, Finland-PTS, Sweden’s telecom regulatory authority, appears to have accepted the general position adopted by operators that meeting the 2002 deadline for rollout of …

BEIJING—Datang Telecom has cut the price of its CDMA handsets by 20 percent to 1,980 yuan (US$239.22). They are the first CDMA handsets in China priced below 2,000 yuan (US$241.63). …

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MELBOURNE, Australia—Vodafone Australia will move to prevent stolen mobile phones from being reconnected from the end of December. Telstra announced in April it would stop reconnections as of 15 August. …

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa—MTN South Africa has launched its General Packet Radio Service (GPRS) service, to be available in a trial phase to its contract subscriber base prior to the commercial …

BEIJING—The China Sports Press Association has selected CDMA handsets from Ningbo Bird to be the official mobile phones for Chinese journalists covering the 2002 World Cup finals. The company provided …

NEW YORK—A new alliance with Korea Digital Satellite Broadcasting is part of an overall plan for LG Telecom to compete successfully with South Korea’s two larger wireless operators, said Yong …

DUBLIN, Ireland—The imminent launch of the XDA, an O2-branded mobile device manufactured specifically for that operator, is clear evidence that European operators are demanding more input into handset development. However, …

TOKYO—KDDI, the second-largest operator in Japan, announced that in cooperation with SK Telecom in Korea it launched an image data transmission service between users of the two operators. It is …

WHEATON, Md.—The Shosteck Group believes the replacement rate for handsets will increase from its low point this year, but will remain below peak levels experienced in 1999 and 2000. According …

TOKYO and DENVER, United States—Toshiba, a leading vendor in Japan, announced that it is going to launch Toshiba-branded mobile handsets in the U.S. market in 2003. As a first step …

TORONTO—Canadian operator Rogers AT&T Wireless reported an agreement with InfoSpace Inc. to launch an English and French-language SMS service dubbed EasyInfo on the carrier’s TDMA and GSM/GPRS network. The service …

BEIJING—The world’s largest mobile market could become decidedly less attractive for cell-phone manufacturers if new proposed rules on cell-phone radiation emissions come into play. A proposed change would restrict the …

SUSSEX, U.K.—The Global Mobile Suppliers Association (GSA) said a recently conducted poll of its new Ventures Program members called for more positive thinking in the wireless industry. Major points brought …

BEIJING—South Korea’s LG Electronics hopes to sell 128,000 CDMA handsets to China Unicom this year. It plans to produce CDMA handsets in a joint venture with Shandong Langchao, in which …

TOKYO—NEC Corp. said it received an order from Taiwan’s KG Telecommunications for mobile handsets for KG Telecom’s i-mode service. NEC said the delivery will make it the first supplier of …

TOKYO—NTT DoCoMo Inc. said it will develop next-generation FOMA handsets equipped with a dual browser capable of handling both i-mode-compatible HTML and WAP 2.0-compatible XHTML by the end of this …

NEW DELHI, India—Leading Thai operator AIS has decided to unlock its network access code to allow customers to procure handsets of their choice from any source—legal as well as smuggled …

OXFORD, United Kingdom—The continued downturn in mobile communications has caused Benefon and Openmobile, both based in Finland, to close their operations or dramatically restructure their businesses. Benefon, one of the …

TOKYO—NEC, the leading handset maker in Japan, announced that it shipped 2.5-generation (2.5G) handsets for China Mobile. China Mobile is the largest mobile carrier in China with 115 million subscribers. …

TOKYO—NTT DoCoMo Inc. said it will begin selling enhanced i-mode handsets this week. The movaD504I and mova F5041 phones are expected to offer packet data transmission speeds of up to …