Japan Computer Industry Scan articles from November 2004

Japan Computer Industry Scan archives from November 2004

LEAD: Softbank to buy C&W IDC to strengthen telecom business.(Brief Article)
November 1, 2004... TOKYO, Oct. 26 Kyodo (EDS: ADDING MORE INFO) Softbank Corp. said Tuesday it has decided to purchase Cable & Wireless IDC Inc. from its British parent Cable & Wireless PLC in a bid to expand its telecom business. The provider of...

Baseball: Livedoor team named 'Sendai Livedoor Phoenix'.(Brief Article)
November 1, 2004... TOKYO, Oct. 26 Kyodo Internet service provider Livedoor Co., which has applied to own a professional baseball team, said Tuesday its ball club will be called Sendai Livedoor Phoenix. Livedoor conducted Internet voting to decide the...

LEAD: PC shipments in Japan up 7% in volume in 1st half of FY2004.(Brief Article)
November 1, 2004... TOKYO, Oct. 27 Kyodo (EDS: CLARIFYING 3RD GRAF) Shipments of personal computers in Japan in the first half of fiscal 2004 through Sept. 30 gained 7 percent from a year earlier to 5,486,000 units for the third straight half-year...

NTT DoCoMo to start bill collection service via 'i-mode' cellphones.(Brief Article)
November 1, 2004... TOKYO, Oct. 27 Kyodo NTT DoCoMo Inc. said Wednesday it will begin collecting payments for client companies via its ''i-mode'' Internet-access mobile phone service. When subscribers to the cellphone service buy the products and...

Sony's new handheld video game system PSP to enter market in Dec.(PlayStation Portable )(Brief Article)
November 1, 2004... TOKYO, Oct. 27 Kyodo Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. said Wednesday it will release its new handheld video game system PlayStation Portable on Dec. 12 for the Japanese market. With high-quality graphics-processing capability and rich...

NEC to launch TV-equipped mobile phone in China.(Brief Article)
November 8, 2004... TOKYO, Nov. 1 Kyodo NEC Corp. unveiled Monday the N940, a mobile phone developed for the Chinese market, saying the new model is expected to be the first handset capable of receiving television programs to hit the world's largest mobile...

PoweredCom, TEPCO, Toshiba to begin fiber-optic DVD distribution.(Tokyo Electric Power Company Inc.)(Brief Article)
November 8, 2004... TOKYO, Nov. 2 Kyodo PoweredCom Inc., Tokyo Electric Power Co. and Toshiba Corp. said Tuesday they will begin a new DVD content distribution service via a fiber-optic network, which they say is the world's first, on a trial basis from Dec....

Nintendo wins court order cracking down on pirated game devices.(Nintendo of America Inc.)(Brief Article)
November 8, 2004... LOS ANGELES, Nov. 1 Kyodo Japan's leading game maker Nintendo Co. on Monday won a provisional court order restraining the import and sale of counterfeit Nintendo video game systems at numerous U.S. shopping malls. The U.S. District...

Benefits for Rakuten to be greater than costs: analyst.(Brief Article)
November 8, 2004... TOKYO, Nov. 2 Kyodo Internet shopping mall operator Rakuten Inc. will receive benefits to more than offset initial losses by owning a professional baseball team, Hiroshi Yamashina, an analyst of brokerage Nikko Citigroup Ltd. said...

NTT DoCoMo to buy Singaporean Internet access provider.(Inter-touch Ltd.)(Brief Article)
November 8, 2004... TOKYO, Nov. 5 Kyodo Mobile phone giant NTT DoCoMo Inc. said Friday it has agreed to acquire a 100 percent stake in Inter-touch (BVI) Ltd., a Singapore-based Internet access provider for hotels, for $70 million. NTT DoCoMo said the...

Baseball: List of players named in distribution draft.
November 15, 2004... OSAKA, Nov. 8 Kyodo List of 107 Kintetsu Buffaloes and Orix BlueWave players, including 25 protected players, selected to the two new teams in Monday's distribution draft (name of team played for in 2004 season in parentheses): * ...

NTT to start optical IP phone service for single-family homes.(Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corp)(internet protocol)(Brief Article)
November 15, 2004... TOKYO, Nov. 9 Kyodo The two fixed-line regional telephone units of Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corp. said Tuesday they will offer fiber-optic line-based Internet protocol telephone services for single-family homes starting in January....

No. of shops on Rakuten's Internet mall tops 10,000.(Brief Article)
November 15, 2004... TOKYO, Nov. 9 Kyodo Japan's largest Internet shopping mall operator Rakuten Inc. said Tuesday the number of shops selling products and services on its portal site has topped 10,000 as of late October. The growing number of shops...

Sharp introduces Blu-ray disk recorder with hard drive, DVD.(Sharp Corp. (Japan))(digital video disks)(Brief Article)
November 15, 2004... OSAKA, Nov. 11 Kyodo Sharp Corp. said Thursday it will introduce on Dec. 9 a new Blu-ray disk recorder with a built-in hard drive and conventional DVD unit, which can record and play back high-definition pictures with the same resolution...

Japan Telecom succeeds with broadband test on moving train.(Japan Telecom Company Ltd.)(Brief Article)
November 24, 2004... TOKYO, Nov. 16 Kyodo Japan Telecom Co. said it has succeeded in an experiment for broadband communications on a train traveling at high speed. Japan Telecom said it has become the first Japanese firm to develop technology to offer...

LEAD: Fujitsu-AMD joint venture to add flash memory line.(Brief Article)
November 24, 2004... TOKYO, Nov. 17 Kyodo (EDS: RECASTING WITH CONFIRMATION BY COMPANY OFFICIALS) Spansion LLC of California will invest more than 100 billion yen to build a flash memory chip production line in Japan capable of handling advanced...

LEAD: NTT DoCoMo to launch 5 new 3G FOMA mobile phone models.(models F901iC, N901iC and SH901iC)(Brief Article)
November 24, 2004... TOKYO, Nov. 17 Kyodo (EDS: ADDING INFO) NTT DoCoMo Inc. said Wednesday it has developed five models for the new 901i series of 3G FOMA mobile phone handsets, featuring virus scan functions and an enhanced audio system, and will start...

Domestic shipments of consumer electronics up 8.4% in Oct.(Brief Article)
November 24, 2004... TOKYO, Nov. 18 Kyodo Shipments of consumer electronic equipment in Japan rose 8.4 percent in October from a year earlier to 189.1 billion yen for the 11th consecutive monthly gain, an industry group said Thursday. The Japan Electronics...

ATTN SUBSCRIBERS: Photo advisory.(Brief Article)
November 24, 2004... TOKYO, Nov.19 Kyodo - A Scope feature story on Yoshio Taniguchi's new Museum of Modern Art, headlined, ''Taniguchi's renovated MoMA to open its arms to New Yorkers,'' and sent earlier, is accompanied by one photo, which is available via...

LEAD: Konica Minolta to set up 2 units in China.(Brief Article)
November 24, 2004... TOKYO, Nov. 19 Kyodo (EDS: ADDING MORE INFO AT PENULTIMATE GRAF) Konica Minolta Holdings Inc. said Friday it will soon set up a management supervising unit and a color copier manufacturing firm in China to strengthen its operations in...

Hitachi, HanbitSoft to set up online-game joint venture.(Brief Article)
November 24, 2004... TOKYO, Nov. 19 Kyodo Japanese high-tech powerhouse Hitachi Ltd. and HanbitSoft Inc., a leading South Korean developer of computer games, will set up a joint venture in Tokyo in December to market multi-player online role playing games...

Tennis: Saeki captures 1st national title.(Brief Article)
November 24, 2004... TOKYO, Nov. 20 Kyodo Miho Saeki defeated Aiko Nakamura in the women's singles final Saturday to capture her first title at the national championships. The third-seeded Saeki, a runner-up last year, downed her top-seeded opponent 7-6,...

Nintendo celebrates launch of DS portable game in Los Angeles.(Brief Article)
November 24, 2004... LOS ANGELES, Nov. 21 Kyodo Hundreds of electronic game players gathered at the Universal Studios CityWalk mall in Los Angeles on Saturday to celebrate the highly anticipated U.S. launch of Nintendo's DS portable game console. Nintendo...

NEC, NEC Electronics to jointly develop LSI chips for 3G phones.(Brief Article)
November 24, 2004... TOKYO, Nov. 22 Kyodo NEC Corp. and NEC Electronics Corp. announced Monday that they will jointly develop system large-scale integration chips for third-generation mobile phone consoles to strengthen the competitiveness of NEC's 3G mobile...

Fujitsu to open 'world's fastest' DNA database.(National Institute of Genetics)(Brief Article)
November 24, 2004... TOKYO, Nov. 24 Kyodo Fujitsu Ltd. and the National Institute of Genetics have developed a DNA database Fujitsu claims has the world's fastest search function, and will open it later this year, its officials said Wednesday. The...

Yahoo Japan to offer parents website filters for kids.(Brief Article)
November 29, 2004... TOKYO, Nov. 26 Kyodo Yahoo Japan Corp., Japan's largest Internet portal site operator, plans to offer a service for parents to restrict their children's access to harmful websites using filtering technology from a company it recently...

NTT DoCoMo to abolish 2nd-generation services by 2012.(Brief Article)
November 29, 2004... TOKYO, Nov. 26 Kyodo NTT DoCoMo Inc. will stop offering its second-generation mobile phone services by 2012, President Masao Nakamura said Friday. The plan will affect some 40 million users of the company's ''mova'' second-generation...