KDDI will soon end SoftBank's lock as the only Japanese iPhone carrier, sources claimed late Wednesday. The new provider would open up to sales of the iPhone 5 under its Au service sometime early 2012, the Nikkei said. It could theoretically start earlier, but it would need more time to prepare.
Pegatron has been contracted to make a CDMA iPhone, insiders claimed today. The scoop is short but would have the ASUS manufacturing arm building phones that would likely go to Verizon and possibly other carriers as well. A deal would help Pegatron take off as a major supplier, DigiTimes said.
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.
More details have emerged of Apple's plans for a Verizon-ready iPhone. Some of the sources behind the previous story have since claimed that Apple has backtracked on its proclamation that CDMA was dead. The company "changed its mind" when it realized Verizon's move to 4G wouldn't be as quick as hoped, the insiders said.
UBS analyst Maynard Um on Tuesday provided possibly early insight into new iPhones based on "checks" within the industry. Without pointing to specific sources, he claimed new iPhones may have a backside touch surface not unlike the Motorola Backflip. Other estimates raise but don't confirm the possibilities of a 5-megapixel camera, as much as 64GB of storage, an AMOLED display and longer battery life.
KDDI became the last Japanese carrier to adopt Android on Tuesday with the addition of the unusual Sharp IS01. A "communicator" rather than a phone, the handheld is unique in having the 5-inch, 960x540 display of a MID (mobile Internet device) but the notebook-like design and 1GHz Snapdragon processor of a smartbook. Sharp suggests it can be used solely with thumbs and gives it multi-touch in addition to a trackball.
Japan's AU KDDI recently created a new brand, iida, which is meant to appeal to fashion-conscious customers. One of the first products to be released under the brand is a new Sony Ericsson slider known as the G9. The handset sports a 1Seg TV tuner built into its stainless steel body, which is coated with a thin coating of titanium compound. Unlike AU KDDI's other phones, the G9 supports both CDMA 1X and GSM networks. Apart from this, a few exterior changes as well as a different display and camera, the G9 is similar to Sony Ericsson's Cyber-shot S001 handset.
