Japanese carrier NTT DoCoMo has announced it plans to invest around $50M into Japanese digital entertainment company Pioneer Corporation, which makes in-car electronics, to acquire approximately seven per cent of the company. The pair described the investment as “a business and capital alliance”, and said they plan to jointly develop an intelligent transport system for launch this year. → Read More
Productivity app Evernote today is announcing that it is teaming up with Honda and the Japanese carrier Docomo to launch the Evernote Accelerator, a month-long mentorship program based at Evernote’s HQ in Redwood City for developers and small startups from around the world that are making apps using Evernote’s APIs. The move is a step ahead for Evernote in its strategy to build out its business… → Read More
NTT Docomo, the largest carrier in Japan, is taking one more step into China today. The company announced that it will offer a localized version of its new “d game” gaming service on China Mobile. This will be the first time that d game is being exported to any market outside of Japan. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. The service will go live on March 26, initially with 20 titles. → Read More
Samsung and Docomo, Japan’s largest mobile communication company, are joining forces to develop Tizen, an open source OS that supporters hope will cut into the 90% marketshare held by Google and Apple. The smartphones may be on the market by next year, reports the Yomiuri Shimbun. DoCoMo is the only firm among Japan’s three top mobile operators that does not sell iPhones, which has caused it to… → Read More
Good news for Japanese startups: Japan’s largest mobile carrier, NTT Docomo, has announced a $125 million investment fund and incubator program for smartphone and tablet related startups — to be called the Docomo Innovation Fund and the Docomo Innovation Village — both due to kick off at the end of March 2013. → Read More
NEC did it again: about 11 months after unveiling the world’s slimmest smartphone at that time, the company is ready to release another super-thin Android phone with a set of impressive specs (via Japan’s biggest mobile carrier NTT Docomo). Dubbed MEDIAS ES N-05D [JP], the handset will hit Japanese stores in February or March this year.
NEC rolled out quite a few Medias-branded Android phones… → Read More
Android adoption is growing rapidly in Japan, with local handset manufacturers doing everything they can in order to meet the demands of customers in all segments of the population. One particularly attractive target group seems to be women, given how many Japanese companies say they design Android phones specifically for female users.
Here are three recent examples. → Read More
Do women need special cell phones? Certain companies, such as Deutsche Telekom or Samsung, seem to think so. Now Fujitsu Japan is ready to roll out [JP] not one but two handsets specifically designed “for girls”, a feature phone and an Android model.
The Android phone, the so-called F-03D Girls’, has been developed in cooperation with popular teenage fashion magazine Popteen. → Read More
Big news from Asia’s mobile market today: Japan’s biggest mobile carrier NTT Docomo (55 million customers, over US$50 billion in sales per year) is teaming up with five other tech powerhouses to develop chips for next-generation mobile devices. Docomo’s partners are NEC, Fujitsu, Fujitsu Semiconductor Ltd., Panasonic, and Samsung.
The goal is to use synergies in the six companies’ expertise in… → Read More
Japan, one of the most advanced mobile nations in the world, doesn’t want to be a “cell phone Galapagos” anymore, at least when it comes to payments over NFC. Paying with cell phones is already ubiquitous in Japan, but now the country’s top three telcos (NTT Docomo, KDDI au, and SoftBank Mobile) are trying to switch from the Nippon-only Osaifu Keitai system to the Type A and Type B NFC standards… → Read More
Japan’s biggest mobile carrier NTT Docomo has introduced LG’s awesome Optimus Android phone in Japan yesterday. It’s compatible to Docomo’s 4G service Xi and follows the launch of the handset in Korea and North America.
The Docomo version comes equipped with NFC and a digital TV tuner for Japanese users wanting to watch 1seg channels on the 4.5-inch, 1280×720 IPS display. LG did not build in… → Read More
Japanese mobile carrier NTT Docomo has announced [JP] it will start offering the Medias PP N-01D on December 9, the latest Android phone in NEC’s Medias smartphone series. And if NEC ever gets its act together regarding its internationalization plans, this pretty cool device might hit the US and other markets soon, too.
NEC is especially proud of the 1,700mmAH battery that’s built into the… → Read More
Japan’s biggest mobile carrier NTT Docomo has developed a real-time Japanese <-> English translation service for mobile phones, the first of its kind. The way it works is that you speak something into the device and wait to hear a voice interpretation of what you just said in another language.
As you can see in the videos embedded below, the service, which uses the cloud for the heavy… → Read More
Truth be told, I wasn’t very impressed with what electronics makers showed at the CEATEC 2011 tech exhibition – especially because a lot of the new products were “leaked” to the Japanese press before the event started.
However, here are a total of five of the coolest innovations Japanese companies showed at CEATEC 2011 in video form, delivered from our friends at Diginfo TV (YouTube channel). → Read More
Is this finally the beginning of Japanese Android phones being made available outside their home market? Japan’s biggest mobile carrier NTT Docomo yesterday announced it has inked a deal with French telco Orange to bring a Sharp Android handset to Asia and Europe.
The handset in question is a pretty nice one, the AQUOS PHONE SH80F (pictured), that Sharp introduced (together with Docomo) in… → Read More
Japan’s biggest mobile carrier NTT Docomo unveiled a few pretty interesting smartphone add-ons today. Perhaps most notable are a set of special cases the company developed to not provide extra protection but to add unique functions to the handsets they are used with.
These jackets essentially turn smartphones into dosimeters, and there are three of them: one to measure radiation, another that… → Read More
Japan’s biggest mobile carrier NTT Docomo is stepping up its efforts to bring Xi, its LTE service, to the masses: today, the company announced two tablets that are compatible with the standard for the Japanese market, the Galaxy Tab 10.1 and a new device from Fujitsu, the so-called ARROWS Tab LTE F-01D.
Both tablets will be released next month, come with Android Honeycomb, and have the Japanese… → Read More
The idea of translating spoken language from cell phone to cell phone isn’t exactly new, but the mobile simultaneous translation system NTT Docomo is currently working on looks really impressive. Japan’s biggest mobile carrier says it uses the “best technologies” for voice recognition, machine translation, and voice synthesis out there for its solution. → Read More
We covered NTT Docomo‘s smartphone line-up for this summer here, but Japan’s leading mobile carrier also revealed 11 new feature phones today. And here are all of them listed up. → Read More
Japan’s biggest mobile carrier NTT Docomo has announced its summer line-up of cell phones today, and we have squeezed all their nine new smartphones (plus Fujitsu’s Windows 7/Symbian hybrid) into this article for your reading pleasure (click here for a list of all new feature phones). → Read More
It turns out the leak we blogged last month is true: Japan’s biggest mobile carrier NTT Docomo today officially introduced the Fujitsu LOOX F-07C as part of its summer line-up, and the device actually does dual-boot to Symbian and Windows 7 OS (not Windows Phone). Hardware-wise, the LOOX is pretty interesting, too. → Read More
Japan’s biggest mobile carrier NTT Docomo today announced it will develop with Twitter a set of new mobile services for its domestic customer base of 58 million. Under the deal, Docomo plans to integrate a “touch and follow” app into NFC-equipped feature phones, allowing two users to start following each other just by placing their handsets together.
Read the rest on TechCrunch. → Read More
Take this with a grain of salt: Japanese tech blog Juggly is reporting [JP] that Fujitsu is working on a cell phone with both the Symbian and Windows 7 OS (not Windows Phone) on board. According to the article, the handset will be released by Japan’s biggest mobile carrier NTT Docomo as part of its summer line up. → Read More
Japan’s biggest mobile carrier NTT Docomo today announced [press release in English] that LG’s 3D-capable Optimus Pad will go on sale in the country as early as this Thursday. That means that the Android 3.0 device will hit stores in Japan earlier than in the US – where it’s expected to become available on April 20. → Read More
On Monday, we’ve just shown you some leaked pictures, but we can now confirm the world’s thinnest smartphone, NEC Casio Mobile’s MEDIAS N-04C, is real. And provider NTT Docomo, Japan’s biggest mobile carrier, doesn’t want to lose time in bringing it to market: it will hit stores over here as early as March 15. → Read More
Japan’s three big mobile carriers are offering more than 100 handsets per year, and some of them are quite unique. The latest limited edition is the Sharp SH-09C [JP], a handset developed in cooperation with French luxury crystal glass maker Baccarat and distributed by mobile carrier NTT Docomo. → Read More
Way back in October 2008, we reported about a cell phone that featured a built-in mini projector. The cell phone was showcased by Japan’s biggest mobile carrier, NTT Docomo, as a prototype. But today, the same carrier announced [JP] that such a spectacular handset will finally go on sale in Japan this Friday. → Read More
In August, we reported that NTT Docomo, Japan’s biggest mobile carrier, is ready to invest a whopping $3.4 billion through 2012 in an LTE service the company has named “Xi” (which is read Crossy). And over the weekend (and as announced previously), the company finally rolled out said service [press release in English]. → Read More
Back in April, Japan’s largest cell phone carrier, NTT DoComo, began running a bizarre promotion campaign in Tokyo (which prompted me to go out and post this photo report on MobileCrunch). Docomo used Darth Vader in a number of weird posters and viral video clips, without saying why and what Vader was supposed to promote. → Read More
We’ve already shown you some cool cell phones Japan’s biggest mobile carrier, NTT Docomo, plans to roll out in the next few months (see the list below for a recap). But there were quite a few more worth mentioning in the company’s new winter line-up (in English). Here are all of them (I left out simple updates, rebranded versions etc.). → Read More
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