OXFORD, United Kingdom-Having deployed several thousand Panasonic GD87 cell phones, Vodafone Germany has confirmed the handsets can make billable calls without users being aware. The company said the software bug within the device could lead to fraud or unwanted charges.According to Vodafone, which has...
America Online Inc. announced that it is launching an industrywide mobile developer program for its instant-messaging services. As flagship members, LG Electronics, Motorola Inc., Samsung Telecommunications America and Siemens AG will work to develop, test and distribute licensed AIM clients for mobile devices. The...
SAN JOSE, Calif.-InnoPath Software Inc. has added Sanyo Electric Co. Ltd. to its list of clients, agreeing to provide its over-the-air software on Sanyo's 3G handsets. InnoPath's DeltaUpgrade Plus software allows operators to debug phones via a download. The product was used earlier this...
TOKYO-NTT DoCoMo said sales of its i-shot handsets have topped 3 million after six months of availability. I-shot is NTT DoCoMo's picture messaging service, which it launched to compete with rival J-Phone's highly popular Sha-mail picture service.The service allows subscribers to transmit still images...
Once the domain of top secret British agents with licenses to kill, wireless handsets that include cameras are now available to the common man as wireless carriers and handset manufacturers continue to slowly introduce the devices.Like most high-tech electronic equipment, these hybrids got their...
Motorola Inc. claims it is the only company that has full type approval certification for its wireless reference designs for handhelds. Texas Instruments disagrees.Pointing to its I.250 platform for GPRS as a key example, Motorola said it has moved ahead of the pack with...
Operators are continuing to cut wireless prices in order to try to court new customers to capture a larger share of fourth-quarter subscriber additions. The fourth quarter historically has been the busiest time of year for the industry.After reporting it lost customers in the...
Record industry giant Sony Music Entertainment bought wireless entertainment company Run Tones, and will use the acquisition to create a new Mobile Products Group within Sony's Music Digital Services division.Meanwhile, wireless application publisher Moviso L.L.C., a wholly owned subsidiary of Vivendi Universal Net USA,...
SAO PAULO, Brazil-Jarbas Valente, Anatel's superintendent of private services, said he was surprised by the auction results for the surplus licenses in bands D and E for personal communications services. Anatel collected $262.2 million in the auction, or 31.31 percent more than the established...
Wireless technology, from Wi-Fi to Bluetooth to GSM and CDMA, served a major role during the Comdex show, with attendees getting a peek at some of the latest initiatives in the industry.But while product releases and new announcements made up the majority of news...
BEIJING-According to Shanghai Customs figures, 11.14 million handsets were exported from Shanghai in the first ten months of the year, an increase of 53.4 percent. The large majority of the handsets were manufactured by Motorola, Siemens, Ericsson and NEC. Domestic manufacturers, led by TCL,...
BEIJING-Consultants CCID, affiliated with China's Ministry of Information Industry (MII) and Analysys Consulting, a partner of the Gartner Group, published conflicting figures on China's handset market in the third quarter.CCID listed the rankings as Motorola (28.9 percent), Nokia (25.7 percent), Samsung (7.4 percent), TCL...
TOKYO-Matsushita Electric Industrial and Nokia announced they would jointly develop a platform for letting a mobile handset and an audio visual (AV) device communicate with each other. Following the agreement, both firms will develop handsets and audio visual devices, such as video players and...
OXFORD, United Kingdom-While being bombarded by mobile operators to use more services, cell-phone users are coming under increasing pressure from other bodies not to use their handsets. In the United Kingdom, the Association of British Insurers is calling for the Department of Transport to...
TOKYO-NTT DoCoMo Inc. plans to introduce its Limitplus billing plan Dec. 1 that will block all outgoing calls and all data communications once monthly phone charges reach a pre-set limit.The carrier said the billing plan, which is similar to automatic spending limit plans introduced...
LOS ANGELES-Wireless application publisher Moviso LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Vivendi Universal Net USA, announced it will begin selling prepaid phone cards for buying ring tones through a lineup of more than 6,000 retail outlets, including 7-Eleven and Wherehouse Music.Each prepaid ring tone...
BEIJING-Already the largest mobile-phone market in the world with more than 190 million subscribers at the end of September, China is gearing up to introduce third generation (3G) services on a trial basis sometime next year. But first, the government needs to make a...
TOKYO-Japanese operator J-Phone's news that it has signed 1 million picture service users was overshadowed by a raid on its headquarters by the country's Fair Trade Commission. The raid was reported to be due to J-Phone's alleged violation of anti-monopoly laws relating to the...
SEOUL, South Korea-South Korea's top mobile carrier SK Telecom will be barred from recruiting subscribers from 21 November until 20 December for subsidizing handset purchases, the Korean government said Friday.The Korea Communications Commission (KCC), South Korea's top telecom regulator, imposed temporary business suspension orders...
CAMBERLEY, United Kingdom-Toshiba launched its first European mobile phone-the TS21i-in the Netherlands through KPN Mobile. The phone will offer one-touch access to KPN Mobile's i-mode service."Since we announced our intention to produce mobile phones for the European market, we have been working hard to...
NEW YORK-LG InfoComm U.S.A. Inc. expects its two new tri-mode phones to appear on shelves at Verizon Wireless Inc. stores in December, bringing to 10 the total of new handsets the San Diego-based company will have brought to the U.S. market this year.The LG-VX2000,...
BEIJING-Managing Director Shinichi Okamoto of Matsushita's mobile-phone department in China told the China Daily Business Weekly his company is aiming for a 25-percent share of China's handset market by 2005 by focusing on high-end phones.He estimated high-end phones account for approximately 14 percent of...
OXFORD, United Kingdom-Having failed to attract European third-generation (3G) license holders to use its alternative cdma2000 technology, Qualcomm now appears to have revised its strategy and is looking to tempt Far Eastern GSM operators away from General Packet Radio Service (GPRS) to Qualcomm's GSM...
