Handsets

TORONTO—Canada’s Bell Mobility launched the country’s first 1x wireless network in the greater Toronto area, with plans to extend the coverage throughout the year to cover most of the country. …

BERLIN—The mobile division of Deutsche Telekom, T-Mobile, has forcefully indicated that it plans to be the first to launch third-generation (3G) services in Germany. The company announced plans to deploy …

NEW DELHI, India—BPL Mobile, India’s leading GSM service provider, hopes to increase substantially its revenues from non-voice services with its recently launched General Packet Radio Service (GPRS) service in Mumbai. …

BEIJING—Nokia expects its handset sales in China to grow by 10 percent to 15 percent this year, the China Daily reported. Motorola leads the market, but Nokia is closing in. …

HAUPPAUGE, New York, United States—Audiovox Communications and Hyundai CuriTel in Korea signed an estimated US$730 million agreement for Hyundai CuriTel to manufacture CDMA handsets for Audiovox during the next 12 …

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MOSCOW—German vendor Siemens overtook Finland’s Nokia, the worldwide mobile-phone sales leader, in handset sales in Russia in 2001, according to a report by International Data Corporation (IDC), a global provider …

TOKYO—Japanese mobile carriers are emphasizing location services to combat increasing competition within the market. The mobile-phone market in Japan has been expanding rapidly during the past several years. However, the …

BEDMINSTER, N.J.—Verizon Wireless launched its America’s Choice calling plans designed to reward customers with the use of its entire network as the home calling area, large buckets of minutes and …

OXFORD, United Kingdom—Having suffered more than its rivals in 2001, Siemens is claiming that 2002 will see a change in the cell-phone business that will enable it to regain market …

NEW DELHI, India—The regional mobile satellite operator Thuraya Satellite Communications Company has signed a license agreement in Pakistan to provide its dual-mode GSM/satellite telephony services. Pak Telecom, Thuraya’s service provider …

BEIJING—Only five of the 19 authorized vendors of CDMA handsets in China have released their models on the Chinese market. The latest was Datang, which launched its DT618 handset priced …

NEW YORK—Emblaze Systems said it has concluded successfully an MPEG4 compliance interoperability test with Samsung Electronics. The companies conducted the trial to determine whether Emblaze’s wireless media platform is interoperable …

[Handsets/devices |Test equipment |Billing systems | Multimedia products | Infrastructure equipment | Mobile software ] Handsets/wireless devices Sony Sony Electronics unveiled its CLIE handhePEG-T415 ld with reduced profile, featuring a …

MUNICH, Germany—Siemens AG said its earnings for the fiscal first quarter increased from the fiscal fourth quarter of 2001, and its handset division returned a profit Siemens will officially report …

LOS ANGELES—Oberthur Card Systems said it has successfully connected its SIMphonIC CDMA card to China Unicom’s CDMA network. According to Oberthur, the test, which used handsets from 19 different manufacturers, …

JAKARTA, Indonesia—Less than two months since the rollout of General Packet Radio Service (GPRS) services last November, Optus made Australia’s first live third-generation (3G) call, the carrier said. Keir Preedy, …

TOKYO—Sharp, a leading consumer electronics manufacturer in Japan, announced that it will launch a personal digital assistant (PDA) for FOMA, the third-generation (3G) service provided by NTT DoCoMo in Japan, …

SEOUL, South Korea—Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. said it will sell its 2.5-generation handsets to Sprint Corp. if its current talks with the carrier succeed. The Korea Economic Daily had earlier …

NEW DELHI, India—The two leading GSM operators in Thailand, Advanced Info Service (AIS) and DTAC, announced new investments in network expansion and marketing, anticipating the entry this quarter of a …

OXFORD, United Kingdom—The U.K. government is calling on cell-phone operators and terminal manufacturers to rapidly improve the security features of handsets to halt a steep increase in street crime involving …

BOSTON, United States—The Yankee Group expects the deployment of new technologies to drive handset sales between 2002 and 2005, with Asia leading the way, especially China. The research firm said …

MOSCOW—Despite a recent Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS) test by one of Russia’s largest operators, Russian Communications Minister Leonid Reiman refused to disclose the timeline for issuing the first third-generation …

BUCHAREST, Romania—Austrian operator One said it will launch third-generation (3G) services in the second half of 2002 once sufficient handsets are available. In addition, the operator said it managed to …

BOSTON—Asia is poised for strong growth in mobile handsets, according to a new report from the Yankee Group. The report projects that the Asia-Pacific region will see total handset shipments …