Media, Entertainment and Gaming
Capcom, the publisher of ôResident Evilö video games, said its net income will rise 10% to Ñ8.6 billion ($83 million) this fiscal year, helped by sales of titles for game machines made by Sony and Microsoft. Profit gained 33% to Ñ7.81 billion in the year ended March 31 this year, while sales advanced 12%.
Telecommunications
KDDI Corporation and Softbank Mobile Corporation have unveiled new mobile phone handsets, with the KDDI's models featuring functions to display movies and Softbank's boasting designs focused on female users. Including the introduction last week of new handset models by NTT DoCoMo, all three major Japanese mobile phone carriers have now unveiled their lineups of new cell phones ahead of the summer bonus season. KDDI is set to launch 12 new models from later this month, with eight of them equipped with its Lismo Video function that allows users to watch movies and TV dramas downloaded from a personal computer.
NTT DoCoMo and KT Freetel announced that they will jointly procure a 3G handset model from LG Electronics. The handset is LGÆs WINE model, which was selected by both companies as an ideal choice for users seeking a simple and easy-to-use, yet stylish, handset. NTT will sell the handset as the FOMA L706ie in Japan from August, while KTF plans to introduce the model in South Korea from September.
Sometime in July, telecom services venture Japan Communications (JCI) is expected to lease wireless spectrum from NTT DoCoMo for a new type of cell-phone service. The Tokyo company is likely to be the first operator in Japan to offer mobile handsets that can make calls on-the-go using voice-over-Internet protocol technology. JCI's service and other mobile VoIP services like it have the potential to change drastically the economics of cellular services. VoIP should mean lower rates for subscribers, especially for long-distance calls. This will be a major improvement for users in Japan, where basic monthly rates are among the highest in the world at an average of about $60.
Software
Nihon Unisys is planning its first foray into the systems market for newspaper publishers and other media companies through an exclusive sales agency agreement with Denmark's CCI Europe for the CCI NewsGate content management system. The two firms signed a memorandum of understanding in March and will ink the formal contract in July. Nihon Unisys will prepare a Japanese-language version of CCI NewsGate with the intention of beginning sales by September. CCI NewsGate is a fully integrated content management system that can be used by reporters and editors alike to post, edit and revise content, with a log maintained for all changes.
Semiconductors
Advantest Corporation may report lower earnings this fiscal year as semiconductor makers scale back investment in factories in response to the oversupply. Net income at the company slid 54% to Ñ16.6 billion ($158 million) in the prevoius fiscal year, while operating profit fell 60% to Ñ22.7 billion. Revenue dropped 22% to Ñ182.8 billion. Chipmakers including KoreaÆs Hynix Semiconductor have scaled back output plans as prices of benchmark computer chips stayed near record low levels after falling 85% in 2007. Hynix said it will cut spending by about W1 trillion ($1 billion) this year.
Hardware
Fujitsu will consider outsourcing and other partnerships to make its chip business profitable. Fujitsu, which competes with International Business Machines (IBM), and Electronic Data Systems within IT services, is weighed down by losses in its semiconductor operations and has pledged a return to profitable this year. Growth in Fujitsu's chip unit is essential, and the firm needs to come to a decision soon on partnerships. It has been a matter of pride to Fujitsu to keep production in-house, but it could cut costs on some small-lot orders for chips by contracting out part of the production.
Hoya Corporation. will sell its Pentax-brand portable printer business to Brother Industries, making it the first business it has sold since merging with Pentax Corporation. The sales price has not been made public. The business, which had revenues of about Ñ1.5 billion ($14.4 million) in fiscal 2007, includes both portable thermal printers and mobile scanners. Brother will take it over the portable printer business on July 31. Hoya merged with Pentax primarily to gain a hold on its endoscope business, as well as other medical equipment. Hoya decided to sell the printer business because it is small in scale and has little relation to the company's optical technologies.
NEC Corporation and NEC Electronics have developed a technology for suppressing power-source noise, which can cause system chips to malfunction. With the new technology, an element with a high dielectric constant is inserted into gaps in the wiring between transistors on a system chip to absorb the noise. The element is created by using a manufacturing technology known as plasma oxidation to form a thin film of tantalum oxide on copper wiring. Plasma oxidation is used in other semiconductor manufacturing procedures and therefore can be introduced easily and at low cost. This approach uses relatively low temperatures, thereby preventing damage to the copper wiring.
NEC has also signed a turnkey contract with Indosat in Indonesia for the supply of a submarine cable system to the "JAKABARE" project linking Indonesia and Singapore. In a statement, the Japanese company said the submarine backbone network will stretch over 1,300km and connect Jakarta, Pontianak, Batam Island and Changi. On its completion in the second quarter of 2009, the network will supply 160Gbps worth of capacity, with the potential to increase capacity to 640Gbps in the future to provide robust, high-bandwidth connectivity to the growing Indonesian market.
Sony and Sharp said sales in China may slow as the Sichuan earthquake dampens consumer spending. Sony's camera sales are running 20% below estimates and it has scaled back projections for Bravia TVs.
Ibiden., a Japanese electronics maker, said it plans to invest Ñ30 billion ($289.5 million) to set up a subsidiary in Malaysia to make circuit boards for handsets. Ibiden also said it will spend as much as Ñ10 billion to buy back up to 1.36% of its total shares between May 21 and June 13.
Victor Co. of Japan., a maker of JVC-brand electronics, said it will shut down a television-making subsidiary in Thailand in January next year.
Korea
Mobile/Wireless
Cell phone sales fell about 15% in May after recording all-time highs in March and April. The nation's three biggest mobile phone makers, Samsung Electronics, LG Electronics and Pantech, said their monthly cell phone sales dropped 15% to just under 2.3 million units. The industry attributed the decrease to customers delaying purchases while waiting for the big three cell phone makers to release new models. Samsung Electronics sold just under 1.2 million cell phones last month, capturing a 50.4% market share. LG Electronics took second place, selling 660,000 phones.
Media, Entertainment and Gaming
Large Korean companies with assets of up to W10 trillion ($10 billion) will be allowed to buy stakes in local broadcasting stations and local cable network operators will be allowed to snap up more of their industry peers with fewer restrictions, according to a regulatory road map put out by Korea's Broadcasting and Communications Commission. The plan is expected to spark a sea change in the rapidly changing local media and telecommunication markets, including a flurry of mergers and acquisitions, as eased regulations mean more and larger conglomerates will be allowed to gain a foothold in sectors from which they had previously been barred.
Telecommunications
SK Telecommunications said it attracted 881,976 new customers last month alone. The number of its 3G mobile service subscribers reached 644,479, lifting its entire subscription number to 5.3 million.
SK Telecom has filed a request with a local South Korean court to seize assets worth W127.8 billion ($125 million) from the former owners of recently-acquired Hanarotelecom over recent allegations that the latter was involved in selling user information. SK Telecom purchased a controlling stake in Hanarotelecom, a broadband operator, earlier this year for W1.09 trillion from a consortium led by Newbridge Capital. In late April, the police said the former management of Hanarotelecom is suspected of having sold private information of some 6 million users to telemarketing companies over the past two years.
Semiconductors
Hynix Semiconductor has developed a new cost-effective NAND flash memory that is 30% smaller than the chips currently in use. The 32-gigabyte memory, developed using the company's "triple-level-cell" technology, allows much higher data storage than the widely-used NAND flash memories of multi-level cells (MLCs), and is expected to cut the cost of production. NAND flash memory refers to chips used mostly in digital cameras, USB flash drives, cell phones and music players such as Apple's iPod.
Internet
The number of high-speed Internet service users in South Korea surpassed the 15 million-mark for the first time in April, according to the Broadcasting and Communications Commission. The number of broadband Internet service subscribers in the country stood at 15.03 million as at the end of April, up from 14.97 million in March. Top fixed line operator KT Corporation accounted for 44.2% of all subscriptions, followed by Hanarotelecom and LG Powercomm Corporation with 24% and 12.2% respectively. Figures for May are expected to drop, however, due to an expected exodus of users from Hanarotelecom following recent revelations that its former management sold user information over the past two years.
Hardware
Samsung Electronics may build a new LCD module plant in China to meet the increasing demand for TV sets in the world's fastest-growing major economy. The new plant will specialise in the installation of LCDs in TVs for US-listed brand Planar. Samsung is looking for an appropriate site for the plant. The Korean company has an LCD module plant in China that installs LCD screens in laptops and PCs.
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