Japan Computer Industry Scan articles from June 2003

Japan Computer Industry Scan archives from June 2003

Film studio Toei's group net profit soars 87.7%.(year ended Mar 31, 2003)(Brief Article)
June 2, 2003... TOKYO, May 28 Kyodo Major film studio Toei Co. reported Wednesday an 87.7% jump in its group net profit for the year to March 31 due largely to improved profitability in its mainstay movie business. Toei said its group net profit came...

NTT DoCoMo to test 4G mobile communications system.(Brief Article)
June 2, 2003... TOKYO, May 28 Kyodo NTT DoCoMo Inc. obtained Wednesday a preliminary license from telecom authorities to conduct a field trial of a fourth-generation (4G) mobile communications system in Yokosuka, Kanagawa Prefecture, the company said....

Hitachi devises vacuuming robot with memory function.(Brief Article)
June 2, 2003... TOKYO, May 29 Kyodo Hitachi Ltd. on Thursday unveiled a prototype cleaning robot that vacuums the floor by memorizing the location of obstacles and other features of the room in advance. A commercial model will be released within a...

Olympus, Kodak to link up on SLR digital camera: daily.(Brief Article)
June 2, 2003... TOKYO, May 31 Kyodo Olympus Optical Co. and Eastman Kodak Co. of the United States will forge a business alliance to jointly develop and market high-end digital cameras, the Nihon Keizai Shimbun reported Saturday. Olympus will develop...

BizTrend: Sales of Sony's Vaio PCs disappoint.
June 9, 2003... TOKYO, June 2 Kyodo Sales of Sony Corp.'s Vaio personal computer, which was a hit when introduced in fiscal 1997, have fallen off, with shipments in fiscal 2002 plunging below the previous year's levels for the first time. ''Sales...

Capcom allows Gaga Com to make 'Devil May Cry' film.(Brief Article)
June 9, 2003... OSAKA, June 2 Kyodo Game software maker Capcom Co. said Monday it has agreed to give Gaga Communications Inc. an exclusive right to make into a movie in Hollywood its popular video game ''Devil May Cry.'' The planned movie will not be...

Infoseek Japan, Lycos Japan to unify as single Web portal.(Brief Article)
June 9, 2003... TOKYO, June 3 Kyodo Infoseek Japan K.K. and Lycos Japan Inc. said Tuesday they will unite their Web portal sites into the one now run by Infoseek Japan on Sept. 1 to make it more competitive with the portal site of Yahoo Japan Corp. ...

Subscribers to KDDI's 3G mobile phone service top 8 mil.(Brief Article)
June 9, 2003... TOKYO, June 3 Kyodo The number of subscribers to the ''au'' third-generation (3G) mobile phone service offered by KDDI Corp. and Okinawa Cellular Telephone Co., a KDDI ally, has topped 8 million, the companies said Tuesday. The 3G...

2ND LD: New service allows Japanese e-mail on foreign handsets.
June 9, 2003... TOKYO, June 5 Kyodo (EDS: CLARIFYING 1ST PARA, EDITING THROUGHOUT) Sun Corp., a telecom venture firm, has developed a technology that would enable Japanese-language e-mail messages to be exchanged between handsets produced by...

Toshiba, SanDisk jointly develop new flash memory cell.(Brief Article)
June 16, 2003... TOKYO, June 11 Kyodo Toshiba Corp. and SanDisk Corp. of the United States have jointly developed a high density NAND flash memory cell structure, the two companies said Wednesday. The new memory cell, which has a physical cell area...

Contracts for subscriber lines post 1st rise in 6 years.(Brief Article)
June 16, 2003... TOKYO, June 11 Kyodo The number of subscription contracts for subscriber line telephone services totaled 51.16 million at the end of fiscal 2002 to March 31, up 0.3% over a year earlier for the first increase in six years, the...

NTT develops 80-megabit wireless communications technology.(Brief Article)
June 16, 2003... TOKYO, June 11 Kyodo Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corp. (NTT) has developed a wireless communications technology that enables Internet access at a speed of a maximum 80 megabits per second, company officials said Wednesday. NTT has...

Sony to produce next-generation flat display next spring.(Brief Article)
June 16, 2003... TOKYO, June 12 Kyodo Sony Corp. said Thursday it will start mass production of full-color organic electroluminescent (OEL) display panels for use in digital cameras and mobile devices next spring. OEL display panels are viewed as the...

Eastman Kodak to reenter Japan's digital camera market.
June 16, 2003... TOKYO, June 12 Kyodo Eastman Kodak Co. of the United States plans to reenter Japan's digital camera market in a year with more than one model that can be accepted by Japanese consumers, a company official said Thursday. ''We are...

Toshiba to spin off 5 businesses Oct. 1.(home appliance business, Toshiba Lifestyle-Electronics Corp., information technology solutions business, Toshiba Solutions and medical equipment business)(Brief Article)
June 16, 2003... TOKYO, June 12 Kyodo Toshiba Corp. said Thursday it will spin off home electric appliance and four other businesses at the parent firm into five subsidiaries on Oct. 1. The spin-off is part of a new three-year business plan announced...

Toshiba develops embedded DRAM memory cell technology.(Brief Article)
June 16, 2003... TOKYO, June 13 Kyodo Toshiba Corp. said Friday it has developed what it calls the world's first memory cell technology for embedded dynamic random access memory (DRAM) system large-scale integrated circuits (LSIs) on silicon-on-insulator...

Yahoo Japan to put up 1st full-page ad on Web site.(Brief Article)
June 16, 2003... TOKYO, June 14 Kyodo Yahoo Japan Corp. will for the first time put up a full-page advertisement for a new product on its Web site from Monday, in association with Asahi Breweries Ltd., sources familiar with the matter said Saturday. ...

KDDI bars 25 spam senders from cell phone mail.(Brief Article)
June 24, 2003... TOKYO, June 16 Kyodo Mobile phone operator KDDI Corp. has barred 25 firms from sending messages on its ''C mail'' cell phone service following their failure to comply with its warning over spam, KDDI officials said Monday. It is...

NTT DoCoMo unveils teleconferencing device for PCs.(Fujitsu F2402)(Brief Article)
June 24, 2003... TOKYO, June 16 Kyodo NTT DoCoMo Inc. said Monday it has developed a teleconferencing device for PCs that allows users to chat with and view others using PCs or cell phones with video phone functions in real time. NTT DoCoMo said it...

CORRECTED LEAD: Toshiba to launch multi-drive DVD recorder...(Toshiba RD-XS31)(Brief Article)
June 24, 2003... TOKYO, June 16 Kyodo (EDS: ADDING DETAILS) Toshiba Corp. said Monday it will launch a new multi-drive DVD recorder that complies with the DVD-RAM, DVD-RW and DVD-R formats in the domestic market in mid-July, making it the world's first...

Shikibo develops micro-print textile to prevent forgery.(Brief Article)
June 24, 2003... OSAKA, June 17 Kyodo Major textile maker Shikibo Ltd. said Tuesday it has developed a textile onto which extremely minute images or characters can be etched with a laser to prevent forgery. The system would enable clothes makers to...

Some Yahoo! BB ADSL subscribers sent wrong bills.(Brief Article)
June 24, 2003... TOKYO, June 18 Kyodo Some of the subscribers to the Yahoo! BB asymmetric digital subscriber line (ADSL) high-speed Internet access service have been sent wrong bills totaling 1.3 million yen, Yahoo Japan Corp. and Softbank BB Corp. said...

Cisco to link homes with workplaces via IP phone service.(Brief Article)
June 24, 2003... TOKYO, June 19 Kyodo Cisco Systems K.K. plans to launch an Internet Protocol (IP) telephone service later this year that will realize free-phone conversations between people at home and workplaces, company officials said Thursday. ...

NEC to spin off group's laser-processing business.(Brief Article)
June 24, 2003... TOKYO, June 20 Kyodo NEC Corp. said Friday it will spin off the group's laser-processing operations into a new company the electronics firm and two other concerns are to set up sometime in December. The two are Japan Industrial...

2 subsidiaries of Nikko Cordial to merge July 1.(Financial Network Technologies Ltd. and Nikko Systems Solutions Ltd.)(Brief Article)
June 24, 2003... TOKYO, June 23 Kyodo Two subsidiaries of Nikko Cordial Corp. will merge July 1 to strengthen their competitiveness and management base as well as to make management more efficient, officials of the Nikko Cordial group said Monday. ...

Softbank to begin ADSL service with faster access speed.(Brief Article)
June 24, 2003... TOKYO, June 23 Kyodo Softbank Corp. said Monday that Softbank BB Corp. will start an asymmetric digital subscriber line (ADSL) service in July with a maximum access speed of 26 megabits per second for Internet connection. Employing a...

Seiko Epson to debut on TSE Tues.(Tokyo Stock Exchange)(Brief Article)
June 24, 2003... TOKYO, June 23 Kyodo Seiko Epson Corp. will make its debut on the First Section of the Tokyo Stock Exchange (TSE) on Tuesday, a move expected to make the company more independent of the Seiko Corp. group. Founded in 1942 as Seiko's...

NEC's BIGLOBE ties up with China's SINA, COTA.(Brief Article)
June 24, 2003... TOKYO, June 23 Kyodo NEC Corp. said Monday its BIGLOBE Internet service provider has formed a business tie-up with SINA, the operator of China's largest portal, and COTA, China's biggest content provider, on assisting Japanese content...

Dentsu, Cyber Communications to set up Internet ad firm.(Brief Article)
June 30, 2003... TOKYO, June 24 Kyodo Advertising giant Dentsu Inc. and Internet ad agency Cyber Communications Inc. said Tuesday they will establish a company specializing in corporate ad campaigns in cyberspace. The two companies said Dentsu e-Link...

LEAD: 17 firms form working group on home networking standards.(Digital Home Working Group )(Brief Article)
June 30, 2003... NEW YORK, June 25 Kyodo (EDS: FIXING NAME OF PDA IN 5TH PARA, TRIMMING LAST PARA) Seventeen of the world's leading high-tech companies said Tuesday they have formed a working group to devise common standards to make it easier for...

NEC to offer filtering service for Internet access service.(Brief Article)
June 30, 2003... TOKYO, June 26 Kyodo NEC Corp. said Thursday it will begin a content-filtering service on its BIGLOBE Internet access service to block access to Web sites judged bad for children. Starting Tuesday, subscribers to the BIGLOBE service...

JVC to produce large LCD TV sets.(Brief Article)
June 30, 2003... TOKYO, June 26 Kyodo Victor Co. of Japan (JVC) will manufacture and sell large liquid crystal display (LCD) color TV sets, company officials said Thursday. JVC launched production of 15-inch LCD color TVs a few years ago. Under the...

Broadband subscribers top 10 million in Japan.(Brief Article)
June 30, 2003... TOKYO, June 27 Kyodo The number of subscribers to broadband Internet access services in Japan has topped 10 million for the first time, the government said Friday. Domestic Internet access service providers had a total of around...

NEC to charge 3,000-7,000 yen for collecting used PCs.(Brief Article)
June 30, 2003... TOKYO, June 27 Kyodo NEC Corp. said Friday it will charge between 3,000 yen and 7,000 yen per personal computer (PC) when collecting used PCs made by the company under a new government ordinance. The ordinance requires manufacturers to...

New PlayStation 2 software to be sold at drugstores.(Kokumin Co. drugstores)(Brief Article)
June 30, 2003... TOKYO, June 27 Kyodo Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. (SCE) said Friday it will add drugstores to the list of retailers for launching sales next Thursday of new software for its popular PlayStation 2 game consoles. The software,...