OXFORD, United Kingdom—Mobile phones should be equipped with satellite tracking and theft alarms, according to the U.K.-based Design Council. The organization claimed that if cell-phone manufacturers adopt these two examples, the number of thefts of mobile devices would decline rapidly.According to Clive Grinyer, director...
BEIJING—China Unicom's CDMA network registered 448,000 subscribers at the end of February. Only a paltry 9,000 users signed up in February. The vast majority of CDMA users were transferred from an existing network that Unicom took over from Great Wall Telecom, and brand new...
NEW DELHI, India—The Thai government on 19 March gave formal approval to the state-owned Telephone Organization of Thailand (TOT) to go ahead with a soft launch of its new GSM 1900 MHz mobile-phone service on 25 March.An official spokesman told newspersons in Bangkok that...
TOKYO—J-Phone, Vodafone Group's carrier in Japan, announced that the number of users of J-Phone's popular mobile photo service exceeded 4 million. J-Phone launched the service with handsets that include built-in cameras called "Shamail"—"sha" means "take a picture" in Japanese—in November 2000. Sharp, a leading...
ORLANDO—AT&T Wireless made several announcements to bolster its presence at CTIA Wireless 2002.The carrier announced it will install Adaptive Multirate Vocorder (AMR) technology that could more than double the voice capacity on its GSM network. In addition, AT&T Wireless said it will begin selling...
HAMAMATSU CITY, Shizuoka—Yamaha Corp. announced it will provide a 16-note polyphonic cellular ring tone download service to German carrier E-Plus Mobilfunk GmbH & Co. KG—coinciding with E-Plus's launch of i-mode wireless Internet service in Germany.The service, Yamaha Super-Ringtone!, will be distributed to NEC's i-mode-capable...
NEW YORK—Moody's Investors Service Inc. has downgraded the debt of Brightpoint Inc., Indianapolis, citing the "recent decline in profitability" of the company and the "uncertainty associated with growth in the wireless handset market over the next several quarters."In its announcement after the close...
SAN DIEGO, United States—Qualcomm signed an agreement with Japanese carrier KDDI to enable the carrier's handsets with Qualcomm's Binary Runtime Environment for Wireless (BREW) technology to enhance KDDI's data services offerings."KDDI's use of the BREW platform and gpsOne position location technology together will drive...
OXFORD, United Kingdom—Having heard that T-Mobile plans to launch third-generation (3G) services in 20 German cities during the third quarter, Vodafone D2 responded this week by announcing plans for a 3G service later this year in a number of large German cities. However, Viag...
OXFORD, United Kingdom—Despite upbeat statements from equipment manufacturers and the organizers, this year's CeBIT exhibition would seem to have been hit with bad news, particularly for the cell-phone industry, together with a drop in the number of exhibitors.Industry analysts used the venue to announce...
TOKYO—Mitsubishi Electric and Toshiba, two leading electronic manufacturers in Japan, partnered for third-generation (3G) handsets and will begin collaborating next month on the development of a new platform for multimedia-enabled, dual-mode mobile phones, both firms announced. Based on the agreement, both firms will jointly...
SAN JOSE, California, United States—For the first time in its history, the mobile-phone industry experienced a drop in unit sales in 2001, according to Dataquest.Worldwide mobile-phone sales totaled nearly 399.6 million units in 2001, a decline of 3.2 percent from 2000 sales. Worldwide handset...
TOKYO—NTT DoCoMo Inc. launched its FOMA mobile communications platform enabling numerous people to participate in a mobile video conference. If four people or less are involved in a video conference, the platform, which is designed to work with the carrier's wireless video phones, allows...
BEACHWOOD, Ohio-Triton PCS signed an agreement to purchase Grayson Wireless' Geometrix wireless 911 caller location systems for installation on its wireless network.Grayson said its network-based system is compatible with Triton's TDMA network technology and existing customer handsets and can be upgraded to be compatible...
SAN DIEGO—Qualcomm inc. says it has signed an agreement with Japanese carrier KDDI to enable the carrier's handsets with Qualcomm's Binary Runtime Environment for Wireless technology to enhance KDDI's data services offerings."KDDI's use of BREW platform and gpsOne position location technology together will drive...
REDMOND, Wash.—AT&T Wireless Services Inc. said it added the Sony Ericsson T68 and the Nokia 8390 handsets to its portfolio of GSM/GPRS devices.The T68 has a color screen and Bluetooth capability. It operates on 900 MHz, 1800 MHz and 1900 MHz GSM networks and...
TOKYO—NEC will supply i-mode handsets to KPN Mobile, making it the first carrier outside Japan to offer i-mode when it introduces the service later this year.NEC will deliver its N21i mobile handsets to KPN Mobile's operations in Germany, the Netherlands and Belgium.
BEIJING—An insufficient supply of CDMA handsets is hampering the development of China Unicom's CDMA network. The shortfall in supply is pushing prices of available handsets higher, further limiting fast subscriber growth.China Unicom President Wang Jianzhou also admitted that some CDMA handsets on the market...
NEW DELHI, India—Mobile-phone handsets and pagers in India will cost less, following a reduction in duties announced in the annual budget presented in the parliament on Thursday. The new measure is expected to shrink the number of phones sold in gray markets."The use of...
OXFORD, United Kingdom—A U.K.-based company is claiming that most 2.5-generation (2.5G) applications will be almost impossible to run, given that more than 40 percent of packets can become lost on General Packet Radio Service (GPRS) networks. The firm said that independent trials indicate that...
BEIJING—Last year on average 4.95 million new mobile users were added to the networks in China every month. In January, the number topped 5.09 million, showing a sustained growth to register a total of 149.9 million users, according to the country's Ministry of Information...
TOKYO—NTT DoCoMo said it plans to introduce a "dual network" system, which will enable users who own both a FOMA third-generation handset and conventional PDC DoCoMo mobile phone to use the same phone number for both handsets.Between 1 April and 31 August, DoCoMo customers...
BALTIMORE, United States—Five new lawsuits seeking a total of more than US$6 billion in damages have been filed against the cellular industry, alleging use of wireless handsets caused brain cancer.The lawsuits were filed Monday afternoon in the Superior Court for the District of Columbia...
