NTT DoCoMo Inc, Japan’s largest cellphone operator, plans to sell a handset that uses Google Inc’s Android software in the first half of next year.
DoCoMo president Ryuji Yamada made the comment at a press briefing in Tokyo yesterday. He also said the company aims to offer “close to 10” so-called smart phones next year.
Google formed the Open Handset Alliance in November to develop Android with more than 30 phone makers, carriers and chipmakers including DoCoMo, chipmaker Intel Corp, and cellphone manufacturer Motorola Inc Smart phones may help DoCoMo recover shrinking market share and challenge Apple Inc’s iPhone, offered by Softbank Corp.
Android is based on the free Linux operating system and is open to any programmer who wants to develop features for wireless devices. Software developers can build custom applications to run with the program.
In the past year, Softbank added three times as many new subscribers as DoCoMo, with KDDI attracting 50 percent more users. DoCoMo added a net 903,100 subscribers in the 12 months ended Aug. 30, compared with 2.6 million for Softbank and 1.3 million for KDDI, according to numbers released by the carriers.
By offering code anyone can use, Google is seeking to break the hold phone companies have on the kinds of applications that run on its devices.
T-Mobile USA Inc became the first company to unveil a cellphone to run on Google’s Android software earlier this month. The G1 uses an open-source platform that allows anyone to develop programs for the device.
The G1, made by HTC Corp (宏達電), lets customers use Google applications to search the Web, get directions and read the news. The device also has a media player that connects to Amazon.com Inc’s music Web site.
Meanwhile, DoCoMo said it will introduce a new model of Research In Motion Ltd’s BlackBerry handset to woo business users. The BlackBerry “Bold” offers a brighter display, global positioning and will be available in the first quarter, DoCoMo said.
DoCoMo, faced with a shrinking market share, in December cut monthly subscription fees for BlackBerry services, which are not marketed directly to individual users, by 40 percent to Y3,570 (US$33.60) to fend off Softbank Corp and KDDI Corp.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
MAJOR BENEFICIARY: The company benefits from TSMC’s advanced packaging scarcity, given robust demand for Nvidia AI chips, analysts said ASE Technology Holding Co (ASE, 日月光投控), the world’s biggest chip packaging and testing service provider, yesterday said it is raising its equipment capital expenditure budget by 10 percent this year to expand leading-edge and advanced packing and testing capacity amid strong artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing chip demand. This is on top of the 40 to 50 percent annual increase in its capital spending budget to more than the US$1.7 billion to announced in February. About half of the equipment capital expenditure would be spent on leading-edge and advanced packaging and testing technology, the company said. ASE is considered by analysts