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 for exploring the U.S. market, Toshiba will increase its stake in Audiovox Communications from its...
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 allows customers to push the pound key on their wireless handset twice followed by a...
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 maximum specific absorption rate in China to 1 watt per kilogram compared with 1.6 watts...
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 up in the poll were: Industry should focus on developing content consumers want rather than...
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 LG Electronics would have a 49-percent stake.Although the company does not have a license...
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 i-mode handsets in Asia outside Japan.KG Telecom will be the first company in Asia...
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 year. The move is expected to make it easier for content providers to supply...
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 channels.The AIS move comes in the wake of a similar decision taken by its...
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 pioneers of mobile terminals, said it is in merger talks with a number of...
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.China Mobile launched data service based on General Packet Radio Service (GPRS) technology last week....
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 28.8 kilobits per second, three times faster than current PDC-based i-mode handsets.DoCoMo said both...
SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico—InfoSpace Inc. announced that it is providing its wireless software and services for the launch of WAP, SMS and speech-enabled data services by Verizon Wireless Puerto Rico. The launch includes a wide range of Spanish-language messaging, entertainment and personalized information services....
OXFORD, United Kingdom—Having failed in its ambitions to become one of the top five suppliers of mobile terminals, Alcatel is expected to announce a partnership with another cell-phone developer to help boost its declining fortunes. The company previously admitted it is looking for a...
BEIJING—China Mobile is to formally launch its General Packet Radio Service (GPRS) nationwide on 17 May under the brand name Monternet. The service, offering high-speed Internet and e-mail, could be interpreted as an attempt to counter the CDMA services of rival China Unicom.Subscriber growth...
DUBLIN, Ireland—In a further indication of the necessity of closer cooperation between previously fierce rivals, Nokia and Siemens have announced plans to collaborate on mobile terminal software. Open standards is the hot term among mobile handset vendors, and this agreement is expected to lead...
DUBLIN, Ireland—A new report from U.K.-based analysts Strategy Analytics suggests that a number of handset vendors could be prime targets for larger rivals. The report, "Western Europe Operators' Handset Vendor Strategies," indicates that while Alcatel, Philips and Sagem handsets are sold by half of...
HELSINKI, Finland—Nokia, the Helsinki-based Finnish wireless equipment supplier, is predicting a dramatic concentration on the vendor side of global telecommunications, believing that the number of major vendors will diminish by 2006 to leave Nokia, Siemens, Ericsson and possibly an Asian supplier. According to J.T....
GREENSBORO, N.C.—RF Micro Devices Inc. said it has started to ship its RF2173 and RF2174 power amplifiers for two additional handsets of a top-tier multinational handset original equipment manufacturer.The benefiting handsets are dual-band GSM devices, which feature WAP 1.1, Internet e-mail, an internal antenna,...
STOCKHOLM, Sweden—Ericsson has dismissed market speculation in Sweden that its latest swing of the downsizing ax is driven by a need to attract a takeover suitor. Nokia is being linked as the likely acquirer, although students of corporate history will well recall that on...
BEIJING—China's largest domestic mobile handset maker China Putian is planning an overseas listing. The company sold 28.96 million handsets last year. China Putian is about to appoint Lehman Brothers and China International Capital Corporation (CICC) to assist in its overseas listing, but the scale,...
TOKYO—Kyocera, the world's largest maker of integrated circuit (IC) ceramic packages and a leading mobile handset vendor in Japan, has won a large-scale wireless local loop (WLL) order from a Thai operator.According to Kyocera, it will provide 202 base stations and 192,000 handsets for...
NEW DELHI, India—Bangladesh has reduced the import duty on mobile phones and dropped the levy on new connections.The duty on handsets has been reduced to 2,500 taka (US$44) from 4,000 taka (US$70.50). The National Board of Revenue (NBR) imposed in March a fixed tariff...
