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 in Pakistan, will offer Thuraya mobile satellite services, including handsets and subscriber identity module...
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 at 2,580 yuan (US$312). Motorola, Hisense, Haier and Eastcom are already selling CDMA handsets.Morgan...
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 with Samsung's cdma2000 1x network, thereby allowing it to transmit multimedia content.Emblaze said it supplied...
Handsets/wireless devicesSonySony Electronics unveiled its CLIE handhePEG-T415 ld with reduced profile, featuring a slim design with aluminum case and enhanced infrared port for controlling audio and video equipment. The company also...
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 profitSiemens will officially report earnings next week, at which time the company is expected to announce it reached its...
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, proved the card's compatibility with both the CDMA network and the handsets. SIMphonIC allows China's...
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, Optus' acting managing director mobile, said: "While Australians probably won't experience 3G services until mid-2003,...
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, during the second quarter of this year.Sharp has been successfully selling PDA terminals under...
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 reported that the vendor planned to sell 3 million cdma2000 1x phones to Sprint.
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 third formidable player, CP Orange.AIS said it would spend 17.6 billion baht (US$399 million)...
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 cell-phone theft. The Home Office released figures that showed more than 700,000 phones were...
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 mobile-phone sales will rise from about 435.7 million in 2002 to about 596 million in...
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 (3G) license in the country. "The main barrier today is a lack of 3G...
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 win almost 70,000 new customers in Christmas sales. The company was the first provider...
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 increase from 162.3 million in 2001 to 296.2 million in 2005.Migration to next-generation service...
SANTA CRUZ, Calif.—Plantronics Inc. has acquired Ameriphone Inc., a company that develops telephones and accessories for the hearing impaired.Ameriphone will join Plantronics' Walker Division, which supplies amplified phones, specialty handsets and communication test equipment to the special needs market. Plantronics said it expects to...
OYSTER BAY, N.Y.—Long-term growth in the wireless handset component market will be "impressive," according to a recently released Allied Business Intelligence Inc. report. ABI predicts that increased demand for mobile handsets will fuel growth in the component sector, causing the cellular integrated circuit market's...
SAN DIEGO-Qualcomm Inc. announced it will launch gpsOne-enabled handsets and their associated position location service plans from KDDI Corp. in Japan this month.Qualcomm's gpsOne technology is integrated on its MSM3300 chip, which is included in the handset. The chip then provides all location technology,...
While wireless handset sales worldwide are expected to continue to climb during the next several years, those sales are expected to be driven more by replacement handsets purchased by current wireless customers than handsets purchased by new wireless customers, according to a report from...
THE HAGUE, The Netherlands-KPN Mobile began tests of i-mode-like services with a small group of users on Dec. 20. The carrier said it will commercially launch the service in the second quarter of 2002. NEC will supply the first i-mode handsets to KPN users....
The next-generation upgrade path battle between GSM and CDMA escalated last week as U.S. Cellular Corp., which serves more than 3 million wireless customers, said it plans to overlay its current TDMA markets, roughly two-thirds of its coverage area, with CDMA 1x technology. The...
While not as desirable as the latest video game consoles or a DVD player, wireless phones and services are third most requested Christmas gifts by teenagers this holiday season according to a survey of 575 teenagers by International Communications Research.The poll, commissioned by Cingular...
BEIJING—China Unicom will complete the first phase of the construction of its CDMA-network on 22 December. The network will have a capacity of 15 million subscribers and cover 97 percent of the country's prefecture-level cities and more than 2,000 counties.Mobile services will become available...
BEIJING—Motorola's V60 and V66 type handsets went back on sale in Yinchuan, the capital city of the Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region in Western China. Sales were suspended on 5 December by the local Bureau for Industry and Commerce after receiving complaints from consumers that...
