Japanese carrier NTT DoCoMo has revealed the lineup of mobile devices that it will start offering over the summer. Eleven models make the cut, including nine smartphones, one tablet, and one "Raku-Raku" simplified smartphone. Notable additions include a new Sony Xperia smartphone, the Aquos Phone Zeta, and the Aquos Pad tablet from Sharp.
Fujitsu and Orange have agreed to offer Fujitsu smartphones to customers in France, with initial handsets being targeted at senior users. The first offering will be the Stylistic S01, a mid-ranged 4-inch Android 4.0 smartphone based heavily on the Fujitsu Raku Raku, one that is focused on helping elderly users communicate.
Fujitsu is preparing to sell some new additions to its mobile computing and stationary computer catalog. The Arrows Tab is a water-resistant Android tablet, two new Lifebooks offer fingerprint-resistant screens, while the Esprimo range includes new all-in-one computers with built-in television recievers and DVR functions.
Engineers at Fujitsu have developed a new data transfer protocol that can improve streaming media buffering and file transfers over a network. The software-based solution optimizes the amount of data packets traveling through a connection in an attempt to avoid network congestion and packet loss, with a a 30-times improvement in file transfer speeds between the US and Japan claimed in tests.
Fujitsu has announced a new addition to its ScanSnap range, offering the ability scan documents directly to mobile devices. The ScanSnap iX500 will scan a document and send it over Wi-Fi to an Android or iOS device running the ScanSnap Connect app, without needing to use a computer as an intermediary device.
Fujitsu President Masami Yamamoto blamed weak demand for Microsoft's newest operating system for soft PC sales, telling reporters that that weak demand would cause Fujitsu to miss its annual shipment target for personal computers. For the year ending March 31, Fujitsu may ship more than six million units, well below an estimate of seven million given in October of this year. Fujitsu's struggles typify those of much of the rest of the PC industry, where only Microsoft seems have generated any traction with its newest operating system.
Fujitsu is planning to bring its line of easy-to-use Android smartphones designed for the elderly to the US and Europe. Aimed at seniors and the infirm, the Raku Raku range has seen success in Japan, thanks to its simplified interface and various pre-installed applications designed to make communicating easier.
adopting its new low-power Z-60 ‘Hondo’ APU for its Stylistic Q572 Windows 8 tablet. With ARM processors currently dominating the current mobile device space, both AMD and Intel are fighting to make competive x86 mobile chips that will find their way into new Windows 8 tablet devices. AMDs Z-60 APU’s are competing head-to-head with Intel’s ‘Medfield’ Atom processors for a foothold in light-weight iterations of full Windows 8 tablets.
Fujitsu has listed a number of devices for the Windows 8 launch. A water-resistant tablet, a tablet that transforms into a notebook, two standard notebooks and a touch-screen PC join the already-announced Floral Kiss Ultrabook line for the October 26th Microsoft operating system launch in Japan.
Fujitsu is launching a range of female-oriented Ultrabooks in Japan. Called Floral Kiss, the range hopes to "bring elegance to PCs", and was planned and developed primarily by female Fujitsu employees. The Windows 8 notebooks will be made available in three colors: Elegant White, Feminine Pink and Luxury Brown.
Fingerprint technology company AuthenTec will be cutting off all of its non-Apple customers starting in 2013, a Korean report says. This includes companies like Samsung, HP, Dell, Lenovo, and Fujitsu. Apple bought out AuthenTec in July, and as is normally the case for the company, the acquisition appears to have been solely to support its own products. AuthenTec clients are allegedly "in a state of panic" about the situation, since they now have to find alternate suppliers for fingerprint scanning.
A tablet concept with embedded eye-tracking is being prepared for its first public demonstration. The ibeam, a collaboration between NTT DoCoMo, Fujitsu, and Tobii Technology, is an Android tablet with Tobii's IS20 sensor that can detect where eyes are looking at, and then perform the action being focussed on by the user.
Fujitsu, NEC and NTT Docomo have formed an alliance to manufacture their own smartphone mobile processors. Access Network Technology will see Fujitsu taking a majority 52.8 percent stake, with Docomo holding 19.9 percent and NEC 17.8 percent - Fujitsu Semiconductor will pick up the remaining 9.5 percent stake. The partnership has been borne out necessity as mobile chip supplies are constrained due to global demand, while the Japanese companies want to reduce their reliance on chips sourced from outside Japan.
Fujitsu has just introduced a new handset for the Japanese market, the NEXT-series REGZA Phone T-02D. It gets a 4.3-inch OLED touchscreen with 960x540 resolution that Fujitsu calls new AMOLED Plus. The display works with a sensor that measures the color of ambient light to change its own color as needed.
Fujitsu has unveiled two notebooks that are set to arrive later this year. Both are aimed at business users and institutions; the Q702 is an 11.6-inch tablet hybrid with an optional keyboard dock, while the LifeBook T902 is more of a standard notebook that can convert into a slate. Both devices will ship with Windows 7, but are Windows 8-ready.
Fujitsu is going to offer build-your-own computer classes to customers in Japan. The Hands-on Custom PC Assembly Service will teach absolute beginners how to build their own computer, as well as fundamental knowledge about its inner workings, and to perform computer support tasks themselves.
Japanese cellular carrier Docomo has been showing off a prototype smartphone that sports a transparent display. The device, developed in conjunction with Fujitsu, opens up new possibilities for smartphone interfaces, as the touchscreen is capable of registering inputs from both its front and back surfaces.
Smartphones have broken the reign of the traditional Japanese cellphone for the first time, comScore found late Monday. As of February, smartphones were overall more popular than keitais, the often feature-heavy but complicated basic phones that have dominated Japanese use for more than a decade. Local brands like Sharp still led at 23.5 percent, but they were either flat or down slightly as frequently foreign smartphone brands took hold.
Fujitsu has refreshed two of its Lifebook notebooks with the last wave of Intel Sandy Bridge processors. The 15-inch AH532 and 14-inch LH532 are now powered by a 2.3GHz, dual-core Intel Core i3. It's paired with the onboard Intel 3000 HD for graphics.
Fujitsu has bought the remaining 19.9 percent of the shares it didn't own from Toshiba in the pair's jointly owned Fujitsu Toshiba Mobile Communications business. The Monday announcement means the new company is now a fully-owned subsidiary of the Fujitsu Group and has thereby been renamed to Fujitsu Mobile Communications. The joint venture worked on the IS12T Windows Phone smartphone that was launched in Japan at KDDI, but little else outside of an Android equivalent.
In a rare instance of backing off of a major deal, NTT DoCoMo said Monday that it had broken up its planned 4G chip alliance. The Japanese carrier along with Fujitsu, NEC, Panasonic, and Samsung had ended their joint venture in chips after an agreement on exact terms "could not be reached" by the end of the fiscal year, at the end of March. The company NTT DoCoMo had made to get ready for the alliance, Communication Platform Planning Co., was being closed and liquidated as a result.
Chipmaker AMD has just detailed its new eight-core Opteron 3200-series CPUs, meant primarily for cloud and web hosting servers. Based on its current Bulldozer architecture, it can be had in four- or eight-core variants and is rated at 2.7GHz. A Turbo Core mode bumps the clock speed up to 3.7GHz, though only at half the active cores.
Apple now has the top-selling cellphone of any kind in Japan, IDC Japan determined late Thursday. The iPhone 4S launch helped Apple claim 26.6 percent of all cellphone shipments in the country this fall. It may have been the first non-Japanese company to top local ranks, ending a longstanding emphasis on local makers.
Fujitsu took the opportunity at the CeBIT show to introduce its ultrabook under the working name Lifebook Premium. Images, specs, and a video come courtesy of NotebookItalia, with the 14-inch notebook sporting a 'frameless' design and the ability to open 180 degrees. The notebook is just 16mm (0.63 inches) thick and weighs 1.5kg (3.3lbs).
Fujitsu first introduced its Arrows F-07D smartphone in December, though the device at the time was only confirmed for a launch in Japan. The company brought the handset to Mobile World Congress, where it was displayed beside a sign noting that it had "cleared the FCC." Electronista checked out the compact Android phone, which is claimed to be one of the thinnest smartphones on the market.
Fujitsu was one of many companies that have adopted NVIDIA's Tegra 3 chipset to power their latest smartphones. The company has yet to give its new offering an official name, calling it an "ultra-high-spec smartphone," however the device appeared to be ready to arrive on the market. Electronista stopped by Fujitsu's booth at Mobile World Congress for a bit of hands-on time.
Electronista is traveling to Barcelona for Mobile World Congress 2012. Updates may come in at unusual times, but we should have updates over the weekend, especially mid-Sunday, as most of the cellphone and tablet world shows its hand. Hands-on coverage will continue through mid-week.
Japanese wireless provider NTT DoCoMo has teamed up with hardware makers NEC, Panasonic, and Fujitsu on developing a rare large-scale integration (LSI) chip for modems that supports GSM, WCDMA, HSPA+, and LTE networks. The companies have developed both the software and hardware intellectual property. An engineering sample of the chips exists, and testing on major mobile networks has been completed.
Fujitsu now plans to bring its quad-core Arrows smartphone to Mobile World Congress, and release more information about, perhaps including shipping and prices. We saw the phone at CES behind glass, and now the Japanese company has revealed its major specs. The phone will be powered by NVIDIA's Tegra 3 chip, which is capable of 1.5GHz clock speeds.
Fujitsu plans to offer smartphones and tablets for the first time in Europe and will bring some of its new hardware to the Mobile World Congress next week. They will include devices that run on Android and Windows operating systems, the Financial Times reported. The phones will also get NFC chips for wireless payments and support 4G LTE where it's active.
Slides from a Fujitsu press conference held on Wednesday show that the company is planning on releasing ultrabooks later this year. At the same time, the fourth quarter will see the release of a Windows 8-powered tablet, the roadmap shared by Notebook Italia indicated. The notebooks will continue to be known as LifeBooks, while the tablets will carry the Fujitsu Stylistic brand name.
NVIDIA in a mix of quarterly and yearly results disappointed investors even as it teased quad-core phones coming quickly. It expected its first fiscal quarter of the year to get it between $900 million and $930 million in revenue, under a $944 million average investor target, with a lower 49.5 percent margin on what it sold than the 52.1 percent most wanted. The company didn't say what prompted the particular outlook.
NVIDIA has sent out invitations to a special event at Mobile World Congress that's likely a strong clue of what at least one partner will show at the event. It plans to show more "quad-core firsts," hinting that a Tegra 3 phone will appear at the event. Most likely, the reference is to either the HTC Endeavor or the upcoming Fujitsu Arrows phone.
Three large Japanese electronics makers are involved in talks on merging assets to build computer chips. Renesas, Fujitsu and Panasonic will at first spin off their separate chip design and development divisions to create a joint company, according to Japan's Nikkei newspaper (login required). The three are doing so in order to better compete in the industry for devices and vehicles.
Fujitsu has introduced a new tablet, the M532, that has surfaced just days after most companies showed off their latest gadgets at CES. The tablet, which was detailed by the German site TechFokus, is powered by NVIDIA's Tegra 3 chipset and previewed with Android 3.2, however the device will be outfitted with Ice Cream Sandwich before launch.
Fujitsu in its turn at CES was focusing mostly on the mobile side, demoing the Arrows Tab and, in a surprise, a quad-core smartphone. The Arrows-badged phone, which was using a Tegra 3, was behind glass at the main Fujitsu booth running the Riptide GP game NVIDIA likes to use to show the Tegra 3's graphics power. We were told it was running Android 4.0 and, on-device, had a 4.6-inch "HD" screen.
(Update: official details) Samsung, Panasonic, NTT DoCoMo, Fujitsu, and NEC are working together on smartphone processors, according to apparent slips from the industry early Tuesday. A joint venture as cast by the Wall Street Journal would probably have Japanese carrier NTT DoCoMo have majority control over the project, which would go live by late March. Little else is known other than that official news could come as soon as later on Tuesday.
Fujitsu Semiconductor and SuVolta have demonstrated a new process and technology that promises to greatly reduce the power consumption of SRAM. The new technology could be used to create SRAM capable of operating at ultra-low-voltages of 0.4V, less than one-half of today's power consumption levels. The new lower voltage SRAM could soon be seeing its way into mobile devices, tethered servers, and networking equipment.
Japan’s KDDI has announced the Fujitsu Arrows ES IS12F that measures in at just 6.7mm at its thinnest point, and 8.5mm at its thickest. The Arrow also only weighs 105 grams despite being fitted with a 4-inch (480x800) AMOLED display. This makes the device thinner than the Motorola RAZR and lighter than the Samsung Galaxy S II.
Apple and ASUS are cutting deeply into the European computer market, Gartner found on Monday. Apple was now in the top five in Western Europe, having seen its shipments this past summer jump 19.6 percent over the past year to get it 7.6 percent. ASUS was the only other company in the top five to gain share and grew roughly as quickly, with a 20.3 percent jump putting it above Dell at 10.6 percent of the computer space.
ARM has introduced a new graphics core, known as the Mali-T658, that promise to bring a significant leap in performance over its predecessor. The GPU is designed for mobile applications, working in conjunction with the company's Cortex-A15 and Cortex-A7 processors. The system is also compatible with a range of APIs such as OpenGL ES, OpenCL, OpenVG and DirectX 11.
Fujitsu has introduced a new supercomputer, known as the PrimeHPC FX10, that is said to be capable of theoretical processing performance up to 23.2 petaflops. The system relies on the company's new VIIIfx processor, which serves as the successor to the existing IXfx chips. The 16-core water-cooled design supports standalone performance up to 236.5 gigaflops, with performance-per-watt reaching 2 gigaflops.
The Oak Ridge National Laboratory will use the parallel processing capability of the NVIDIA Tesla M2090 GPU in a new supercomputer, a Cray XK6 nicknamed "Titan." The new supercomputer could deliver over 20 petaflops, making it more than twice as fast as the most powerful supercomputer today, the Fujitsu K supercomputer. Titan will also be three times more energy efficient.
Japanese carrier KDDI has announced its winter lineup for the last quarter of 2012. The second largest wireless provider in Japan will be offering six Android phones, two feature phones and a new tablet. In a unique touch, most of these phones offer waterproof protection.
Microsoft chief Steve Ballmer during the company's Financial Analyst Meeting acknowledged that Windows Phone 7 still wasn't performing well. Treating it as a first-year wrap up, he said Microsoft phone partners hadn't sold "quite as many as I would have liked" between its October release and today. He didn't quantify the numbers, but shipments have been flat and have led to steady losses in market share.
NTT DoCoMo has officially announced two new tablets for its Xi LTE service, which it launched in December. The Japanese service provider will be offering its customers the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 LTE and the Fujitsu Arrows Tab LTE F-01D. Both Android 3 tablets will come in white and feature 10.1-inch 1280x800 displays
A newly discovered FCC filing suggests Fujitsu is readying to bring its recently leaked and Japan-only F-01D 10-inch Android tablet to the US. The device meant for American shores won't have access to mobile or broadband networks however, only supporting Wi-Fi. This could also indicate Fujitsu is just trying to get an FCC certificate for the tablet for travelers who come to the US often.
Amateur coders have posted an unofficial ROM of the upcoming Windows Phone "Mango" update for European HTC Mozart users. The OS update has been finished since late July, and leaked in early August. The new ROM is the first version that contains hardware-specific firmware and manufacturer customizations.
Hulu on cue has launched Hulu Plus for Japan. The country is the first outside of the US to get Hulu and gives it a very different business model. Plus is the only option in the country and costs the equivalent of $19 per month, almost twice as much as the $8 it does in the US.
The seven-inch Android 3.1 tablet from Fujitsu that surfaced back in May is likely to turn out to be a 10-inch device, according to a new leak from China's Juggly. The tip puts the device to launch at Japanese provider NTT DoCoMo near the end of September. The device would also support the carrier's LTE-based Xi 4G service, with the carrier itself promising to launch two such 4G tablets this fall.
