A new smartphone from NEC Casio is due to launch in Japan at provider NTT DoCoMo. The high-end Medias LTE N-04D will support 4G LTE speeds and sport a 1.2GHz dual-core processor. As is typical of high-end Japanese phones, a 1Seg TV tuner will also be onboard.
NEC late this past week said it would drop 10,000 jobs in a bid to turn around a souring business. The drops, which would equate to about 8.6 percent of its entire workforce, were meant to mitigate the sudden estimate that it would lose about 100 billion yen ($1.3 billion) in the fiscal year that ends with March. It had previously predicted that it would make a profit of 15 billion yen ($195.4 million), a reversal from losses over all but one of the past four years.
Contract manufacturer Quanta has filed suit against chip maker AMD. Taiwan-based Quanta alleges that AMD breached its contract by providing defective products that caused the computers, into which they were installed, to malfunction. The complaint, filed in the US District Court for the Northern District of California, specifically identifies the problem as being rooted in NEC laptops.
Casio Japan, known for its calculators and wristwatches, has just introduced the first watches with Bluetooth LE (low energy) onboard, making it compatible with Bluetooth 4.0 cellphones like the iPhone 4S. The G-Shock GB-6900 will synchronize the current time from paired handsets and will display incoming call names or numbers, e-mails, and text messages on its display. Users can also switch handsets into vibration mode without touching them.
(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.
NEC is launching a pair of 24-inch LED backlighted displays. The LCD-EA243WM (white) and LCD-EA243WM-BK (black) carry a brightness of 250cd/m2, a dynamic contrast ratio of 25,000:1 and a response speed of 5ms. The display design incorporates a proximity sensor that recognizes when the viewer has left and dims the screen, as well as a programmable CO2 counter that measures the display's emissions and converts it into carbon emission costs.
VirnetX revealed on Monday that its latest lawsuit against Apple was being joined by a matching International Trade Commission dispute. The complaint touches on the same VPN-related patent used in the main lawsuit and which VirnetX has tried to wield against large parts of the technology industry. It hopes not just to ban future iPad, iPhone, iPod, and Mac sales but to stop all marketing and sales around whatever is currently in stores should it win.
NEC has plans to bring out a seven-inch netbook that is powered by Android and is just 9.9mm thick. During an interview with the company's senior vice president, Sakae Takatsuka, a prototype of the unit was shown to NotebookItalia. Dubbed MGX, the device has a screen resolution of 1024x600 and both Wi-Fi as well as HSUPA-based 3G.
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.
NEC announced an addition to its LaVie line of portable computers, a new tablet today dubbed the LaVie Touch. The Touch features a 10.1-inch IPS LCD panel with 1280x800 resolution and runs Windows 7 Home Premium. It will be bundled with wireless keyboard and mouse, and a DVD dock that also serves as a stand. The Touch is 10.4in x 7.2in, 0.62in. thick and weighs 1.6 pounds.
Lenovo chairman Liu Chuanzhi in comments bragged of his company's position in the PC space and expected to take the second place spot away from Dell this year. Lenovo's current pace was quick enough that it would happen in the last few months of the year. CEO Yuanqing Yang pointed to an existing quick pace but also took a dig at HP's possible exit from PCs, suggesting that it wasn't an iPad effect but weak will and poor performance at HP that was leading it to wither in the face of smartphones and the iPad.
NEC just introduced two new monitors, with the ultra-slim, 20-inch MultiSync EX201W and 24-inch MultiSync P241W for professionals. The former is meant for home use or business applications and offers a 1600x900 resolution and a relatively slim 16.4mm thickness. It also has a 25,000:1 dynamic contrast ratio and a 1,000:1 typical contrast ratio.
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 NEC N-04C Android smartphone that's offered by NTT DoCoMo in Japan may be coming to the US, Japanese daily business paper Nikkei reported. The handset, touted as the world's thinnest at 7.7mm, was announced to be coming to the US last year and may be offered by Verizon and some other carriers. It will be made by NEC Casio Mobile Communications, which was formed back in 2009.
Android successfully pushed past the iPhone for the top smartphone platform in Japan last fiscal year, according to MM Research Institute. Google shot up from just 250,000 phones and 11 percent of the market at the end of March 2010 to 4.91 million phones at the end of March this year, or 57.4 percent. Apple moved 3.23 million iPhones over the same period and was 37.8 percent; BlackBerry and Windows Mobile were virtually non-existent.
Intel during the Developer Forum in Beijing confirmed late Wednesday that its 2012 processor architecture would have native USB 3.0 support. Backing leaked slides, architecture group VP Kirk Skaugen explained that Ivy Bridge, a 22 nanometer version of the Sandy Bridge design used in today's Core processors, should support the interface. He saw the 5Gbps interface as "complimentary" to Thunderbolt in an online event CNET caught.
VirnetX is expanding the scope of lawsuits targeting several major technology corporations, according to an announcement. The company has won a new patent from the USPTO, Agile Network Protocol for Secure Communications Using Secure Domain Names, which it is amending to complaints in two separate suits. The first case lists Aastra, Apple, Cisco and NEC as defendants; the second is leveled against Mitel and Siemens.
NEC this week added two new projectors to its business-oriented M range. The M300XS and M300WS are short-throw projectors and share many specs and features, including 3,000 lumens of light output and a 5,000-hour lamp life. Either can throw up images from just 1.8 feet away from the screen or wall.
Japan’s NTT DoCoMo has introduced what it claims is the world’s thinnest Android smartphone, the NEC MEDIAS N-04C. Measuring just 0.3-inches thin, the phone incorporates an 800MHz processor and runs Android 2.2 with support for Flash 10.1. It also centers on 4-inch TFT LCD with 854×480 resolution with Corning’s Gorilla Glass.
A leak Monday morning has shown NEC leaping into smartphones in earnest with an Android device that would be thinner than any other phone to date. At 7.7mm (0.3in) thick, the Medias N-04C would not only be thinner than the iPhone 4 but even other Android phones that have claimed the title just days earlier, such as the 8.5mm Galaxy S II or Optimus Black. The phone material seen by Draft Life would still manage to fit a four-inch touchscreen, 1Seg over-the-air TV tuning and NFC for using FeliCa wireless payments in Japan.
Japanese electronics maker NEC announced on Wednesday it will take steps to suppress the noise made by motors and related mechanisms used in the zoom lenses of its compact digital cameras. The technique would be most useful in movie recording mode. The technology would do so artificially and can be likened to noise cancelling methods, recording the core characteristics of the offending sounds and then removing them in real time from the signals recorded by the microphone.
Japan's NEC on Tuesday introduced a new netbook, unique in that it runs on Android 2.2. The 7-inch touchscreen in the LifeTouch Note has an 800x480 resolution, and there is also a GPS sensor, an accelerometer and NVIDIA's Tegra 2 CPU onboard. There is also an SDHC memory card slot and a two-megapixel camera.
Alienware, HP and MSI have stopped selling computers powered by Intel's new Sandy Bridge processors due to a design flaw in the chips. Intel said performance of the SATA2 ports on the mainboard can degrade over time. HP and MSI will hold back products with the chips, and Alienware removed the buy page for its m17x gaming notebook. HP, apart from pulling some of its models, will also delay a business product demo scheduled for February 10 in San Francisco.
Lenovo and NEC on Thursday confirmed a rumored deal to merge their PC businesses in Japan. The resulting NEC Lenovo Japan Group will be the largest single computer maker in the country and will see the two work together on not just developing computers but on future tablets. Both companies will keep using their brand names on home devices but should also help Japanese companies sell hardware beyond the island and sell servers.
Lenovo might soon take control of NEC's computer business in a major shakeup of the industry, Japanese media said. The Nikkei claimed anonymous sources that had Lenovo in late stage talks to buy a majority of NEC's shares in its computer group. The move would give Lenovo say over NEC's lineup, although NEC-badged PCs would still exist.
Japan's Renesas, which makes camera chips and merged with NEC, has now said it will soon produce a sensor that will allow for cell phones with 16-megapixel cameras. The CE150 sensor will offer a significant improvement over currently available cameras in smartphones, such as the 12.1-megapixel one in the Nokia N8 and some 13-megapixel cameras from Japanese makers. The chip will also allow continuous shooting up to five times faster than the currently available camera phones as well.
The European Union on Wednesday formally established its micro USB charging standard for phone charging. The approach proposed over a year ago will guarantee that phones and phone chipsets from at least 14 companies, including Apple, LG, Motorola, Nokia and RIM, will support charging over a micro USB connection without needing to switch chargers. The measure was implemented to cut back on both wasted chargers and to let users switch chargers without risking damage or undercharging.
NEC is reportedly preparing to launch a dual-screen Android tablet, which is set to arrive at CES amid a myriad of other tablet introductions. The device is said to be a variant of the company's LifeTouch, a single-display tablet geared for corporate buyers. The upcoming model integrates two seven-inch displays, each capable of presenting different information
Japan's NEC on Wednesday announced the near launch its LifeTouch tablet. The seven-inch, 800x480 tablet uses Android 2.1, and NEC says it combines the functionality of a cellphone and a PC. Meant mostly for corporate users, the tablet has a four-way direction pad and can be operated with an included and hidden stylus.
Apple chief Steve Jobs told inquisitive fan Tom Kruk that USB 3.0 wasn't ready for Macs at the present time. When asked why it wasn't a feature, Jobs answered that "we don't see USB 3 taking off at this time." He went on to tell the 9to5Mac reader that technical support had a large part to play as Intel wasn't putting its weight behind the technology. There's "no support from Intel," he said.
Sony Ericsson Android-based phones like the Xperia X10 have had a rare impact on Apple's share of smartphones in Japan, the country's MM Research Institute said today. The iPhone still had a comfortable lead at 60 percent of all smartphones in the first half of 2010, but it fell a point from a year ago where Sony Ericsson rose to 21 percent. Sharp was a distant third with 6.3 percent while Toshiba and Taiwan's HTC were tied at 4.5 percent.
NEC has quietly put out a new 23-inch LCD, the MultiSync EX231W, that it promises will use technology to gain its green credentials. The design has both an ambient light sensor to automatically lower brightness but also has a motion sensor to check for inactivity and go dark when the user is away. LED backlighting and a manual override in Eco Mode cut back on the power even while active.
Taiwan's Commercial Times today claimed that Intel will launch its first native USB 3.0 chipset at next week's Intel Developer Forum. Its Cougar Point chipset for desktops using Sandy Bridge processors will get the faster bus speeds and should help accelerate the adoption of the newer standard in computers. When it would ship wasn't mentioned, but Intel has already promised a late 2010 launch and is informally expected to ship in November.
VirnetX continued its attempts at making lawsuits its business model by filing a patent complaint late yesterday against several technology companies. Aastra, Apple, Cisco and NEC have been accused of violating five patents relating to secure communications without having to input information. The Tyler-based, Eastern District of Texas suit alleges that all of Apple's iOS devices, as well as VoIP phones from the other companies, are copying technology patented between 2002 and 2009.
NEC has unveiled a new mid-range display aimed at pros, the 23-inch MultiSync E231W. It's said to be up to 40 percent more efficient than CCFL backlit monitors as it uses LED backlighting. It outputs at a native 1080p and the display has a 25,000:1 dynamic contrast ratio.
NEC Display showed off what it says is the brightest LED-based projector at InfoComm. Rated at 2,000 lumens, it uses multiple LEDs for the red, green and blue light sources. Dubbed Sirius, the prototype projector is also capable of displaying 98 percent of the Adobe RGB color gamut. This compares favorably to a traditional front projector that can reproduce about 60 percent of the color gamut, NEC says.
Apple's strong Japanese iPad launch may have given it a large piece of the entire local computer market, analysts at BCN discovered today. If the tablet is counted as a computer, it would almost triple Apple's market share in Japan from 3.5 percent in April to 11.5 percent in May. The spike would help Apple overtake Sony's 9.3 percent and make it the fourth largest computer company on the island nation.
The mobile merger that is NEC, Hitachi and Casio unveiled aggressive expansion plans this week. The resulting company, now called NEC Casio Mobile Communications, plans to ship 12 million handsets in 2012, which represents an increase of 60 percent compared to all phones shipped by the three individual companies in 2009. This expansion may reach the US, with reports suggesting NEC Casio Mobile looking to tie in with Verizon and AT&T.
The European Union today fined a collective of memory producers 331.3 million euros (about $404.4 million) for price fixing. Electronics giants Hitachi, Mitsubishi, NEC, Samsung and Toshiba as well as Elpida, Hynix, Infineon and Nanya admitted they artificially kept RAM prices high between at least 1998 and 2002 by secretly coordinating pricing between each other. Samsung faces the largest fine and will pay 145.7 million euros ($177.8 million), but Infineon will also pay a large 56.7 million euros ($69.2 million) for its involvement.
Japanese wireless provider SoftBank has revealed its lineup of new handsets for the spring. There are 15 new devices from various companies, many of which now have Wi-Fi; the feature is a rarity in regular Japanese phones, many of which depend on 3G. The carrier has also brought a Java Twitter app to many of its handsets as well as other account-free apps that follow tweets of specific people or preprogrammed Twitter channels devoted to sports, fashion or news.
The European Union is about to fine nine companies a total of $370 million for allegedly fixing pricing on flash memory, leaks revealed on Monday. Samsung, Hynix, Toshiba and six other major companies are being pressed to admit to colluding on high prices in exchange for seeing a 10 percent drop in the fines levied against each company. An NYT contact believed a ruling could come as soon as Wednesday.
Japan's NEC on Friday announced it has developed a technology that can find illegal copies of videos uploaded to the Internet in just seconds. This speed is attained by creating a comparison piece that is just 76 bytes from the original and compares it to the allegedly copied file. The technology is part of the MPEG-7 standard, and would help movie producers and Internet service providers identify pirates both faster and more accurately than in the past.
NEC had released its second professional display monitor after the initial MultiSync PA241W with the 27-inch MultiSync PA271W. The new display has a 10-bit p-IPS panel with a resolution of 2560x1440, along with internal 14-bit programmable 3D lookup tables. At the same time, NEC released its MultiProfiler display configuration application and SpectraViewII version 1.1.04 color calibration.
Japanese electronics maker NEC has developed a CPU cooling system that is said to be 60 percent more energy efficient than a water-cooling system and 80 percent more efficient than an air-cooling system. The system relies mainly on a liquid chlorofluorocarbon (CFC) substitute to draw heat away from the processor core. The refrigerant boils at 122 degrees Fahrenheit, absorbs CPU heat, and is then cooled by a fan before changing back into liquid and repeating the process.
Japanese wireless provider NTT DoCoMo, along with Renesas, Fujitsu, NEC, Panasonic and Sharp on Monday announced an agreement to build a new application platform for cellphones. It would be compatible with Symbian and Linux-based mobile operating systems and promises to bring faster processing speeds and better 3D graphics. The platform will save Fujitsu, NEC, Panasonic and Sharp from having to develop basic app processing functions on their own.
Apple virtually dominates the Japanese smartphone market, MM Research Institute found in a new study. By the end of the fiscal year ended in March, the iPhone had 72.2 percent of the field with 2.34 million units on Japanese. Its next-closest rival, HTC, had just 11.1 percent, while local phones didn't register until third place Toshiba's 6.8 percent.
Intel this afternoon sought to cement its grip on the very high end of computers with its first eight-core processor, the Xeon 7500. The two extra cores give it even more performance in highly parallel situations -- up to 16 program threads at once with Hyperthreading -- and the design itself is unique at Intel in the sheer amount of scaling compared to the outgoing 7400. A four-processor server can handle as much as 1TB of memory, and a single computer can include as many as 256 discrete processors.
NEC today said it has developed a new chipset whose bus speeds could more than triple the speed of USB 3.0. By adding a delay to the feedback signal that becomes linked to the data rate, the company says it has conquered the interference that plagues very high speed data and provided considerably more headroom. It expects that USB 3.0 or a similar technology could reach 16Gbps, or about 3.3 times faster than the peak 5Gbps of the official spec.
NEC has added a new 17-inch LCD monitor, the AS171 to its lineup on Tuesday. The 4:3 aspect ratio monitor is made with the environment in mind, and uses 21 percent less power and has half of the mercury content of the ASLCD73VX-BK model it replaces. It has a built-in 2-step ECO Mode for two levels of energy savings. A carbon footprint meter is integrated as well for tracking carbon savings.
Japanese wireless provider NTT DoCoMo will demonstrate a prototype handset capable of running on the next-generation LTE technology at Mobile World Congress this month. According to a Monday report, the provider is working with NEC, Fujitsu and Panasonic on bringing the technology to market, which promises up to the 100Mbps peak data of 4G. The prototype will use an LTE chip developed by the four companies and is the same one shown off last fall in data cards.
