In addition, the company has added former Skype and eBay exec Michele Don Durbin to its team as vice president of marketing, as Eye-Fi eyes more international growth.

The capital infusion from NTT DoCoMo means Mountain View-based Eye-Fi is going deeper into mobile, after having originally made its footprint in digital cameras without Wi-Fi connectivity.

In April, the company said, NTT DoCoMo’s 59 million mobile subscribers in Japan will be able to use Eye-Fi to share photos between their digital cameras and mobile devices without needing to upload them to a computer. Eye-Fi will introduce a series of applications for both iOS and Android that will allow users to have an Eye-Fi experience without the card, Eye-Fi CEO Yuval Koren said.

“As you think about Eye-Fi and how we’ve evolved, we’re thinking about it as a service first and a device second, especially on connected handsets and smartphone platforms,” Koren said.

The partnership with NTT DoCoMo marks the second in Japan for Eye-Fi. Last fall, the company struck a deal with KDDI, Japan’s second-largest mobile operator, for unbundled app distribution to its mobile subscribers.

Eye-Fi’s focus on mobile comes as the company is facing a possible change to SD card standards that could increase competition for the start-up. In January, the SD Association, which represents more than a thousand companies that determine and promote SD standards, announced plans for a new Wireless LAN SD standard for full-sized and micro SD/SDHC/SDXC cards. Eye-Fi said that this proposed new standard violated Eye-Fi’s intellectual property.

A spokesperson for the SD Association told AllThingsD that there are no updates on whether the new standard has been approved, and that the Association is still following its normal process of evaluating disclosures received during the IP disclosure period.

Eye-Fi’s Koren would only say, “As far as we can tell, they are taking a serious look at the IP question that we’ve raised, and we look forward to their response on that.”

That, however, is starting to change.

With the market increasingly global — and overseas players impinging on its domestic market, Fujitsu is looking overseas. And when it looks, it sees North America as the place it would most like to be.

“North America is our priority market,” Senior Executive Vice President Hideyuki Saso said in an interview at the Consumer Electronics Show. Fujitsu is also in the process of reacquiring full control of a mobile joint venture that had paired it with Toshiba in the phone business.

Fujitsu, which makes both Android and Windows Phone devices in Japan, isn’t quite sure what market niche it will target, but it is sure it doesn’t want to be just one among the smartphone masses.

“If we try to do same thing as how our competitors because of the competition, it is going to be tough,” Saso said via a translator. “We would like to identify the right way of entering the North American market that would make use of our technology and expertise to make a steady landing.”

Timing is also uncertain, though Saso said the company hopes it will be either later this year or next year. The key, he said, is to figure out where it can stand out from the pack.

“We don’t want to be just another mobile phone,” he said, “We want to be special.”

While the U.S. smartphone market is already crowded, Saso said Fujitsu has several strenghts it can draw on, including a wide range of thin, yet durable and waterproof models. Though not yet a player here, Fujitsu boasts it has the thinnest smartphone approved by the FCC for use in the U.S.

In making its phones waterproof, Saso said, the company had to also make them tough.

“For us to achieve this waterproof (capability), we also had to look at durability again, the rigidness and the toughness,” he said, banging a large pen on the phone’s screen for emphasis.

Fujitsu also has the noise cancellation used in a Formula One vehicle it sponsors — a position that explains the presence of the race car in its CES booth.

All of those, Saso says, could form the basis of Fujitsu’s entry, though the company is still evaluating its product options. Another approach would be to offer a phone similar to the Raku Raku (“easy easy”) phone it offers in Japan — a basic phone, aimed at seniors, that mixes in enhanced calling and health diagnostics such as heart rate, calorie and fat intake, and exercise. Fujitsu has sold 20 million of the devices in Japan.

MORE CES NEWS:

• Complete coverage
• HP’s Former CTO: Ultrabooks Are Nothing New, webOS Still Has Life Yet
• Walt Shows Off CES Gadgets for Fox Business News (Video)
• What Kind of Web Video Plans Does Sony Have? (Video)
• Fujitsu Seeking Way Into Crowded U.S. Smartphone Market
• Why Rhapsody Is (Probably) Bigger Than Spotify — In the U.S.
• Microsoft Beefing Up CeBit Presence Even as It Pulls Back on CES
• Inside the CES Lost & Found
• FCC Chairman Has New Tablet, but Same Script: More Spectrum!
• Verizon Wireless: We Want to Connect Five Devices for Every Subscriber
• Ultrabooks From HP and Lenovo That Are (Kinda, Sorta) Different
• Walt and Katie Take a Tour of CES (Video)
• Schmidt-Storm Alert: The Google Chairman Didn’t Like Your Question
• T-Mobile Expands Bobsled Messaging Service
• Intel Shows Just How It Plans to Get Into Phones (Video)
• Motorola CEO: We’re Going to Release Fewer Phones This Year
• Kinect Helps Keep Aging Xbox at the Top of Its Game
• More From T-Mobile CEO: On Pricing, LTE and That Ever-Elusive iPhone
• Exclusive: New Boss Acknowledges Windows Phone Still Has “Awareness Problem”
• And You Thought Jawbone UP Was Going to Miss the CES Party!
• Interview: T-Mobile CEO Says No Second AT&T Deal Out There
• Grover Is at CES and I Am Missing It
• BlueStacks Bringing Android Apps to Windows 8
• Why the Future of TV Won’t Be Here Soon
• Nvidia’s Tegra 3 Tries to Save Battery in All Sorts of Different Ways
• Dynamic Dual Coverage: Ballmer’s Last Act in Vegas and the BCS Championship in 3-D
• Microsoft Phoning In Its Last CES Keynote
• Myspace — Yes, Myspace — Says It’s Going to Sell You Web TV
• Samsung Unveils “Super” 55-Inch OLED TV
• Nokia Unveils That LTE Windows Phone It’s Been Dying to Share
• Steve Ballmer Gives Ralph De La Vega a Very … Vigorous Greeting (Video)
• Interview: AT&T’s De La Vega on LTE, Tablets and Life After T-Mobile
• AT&T’s De La Vega: Shared Data Plans Still in the Works
• LG: 55-Inch Glasses-Free 3-D Screen Is on the Way
• LG Pushes 4G Smartphone Through Verizon: The LG Spectrum
• Live: AT&T’s Vegas Act Stars LTE and, Making Her Return to the Stage, Nokia
• CES Notebook: The Constant Search for Power and Vegas’ Worst-kept Secret
• Belkin Bringing Mobile TV to Lots of Cellphones, Will Anyone Tune In?
• Acer Introduces “World’s Thinnest” Ultrabook and a “Me-Too” Cloud Service
• There Better Be Some Cool Stuff at CES, Because CE Holiday Sales Data Bytes!
• CES 2012: Snooki and Bieber Are In, Gaga Is Out!
• Coming to a Smartphone Near You: Gorilla Glass 2
• RIM Hopes Next PlayBook OS Will Impress at CES
• Ultrabooks, the Ultra-Fancy New Name for Laptops
• At CES, Expect More Gadgets Telling You to Get Off the Couch
• Intel to Detail Its Phone Plans at CES Next Month
• Microsoft Pulling Out of CES After Upcoming Show
• Intel to Detail Its Phone Plans at CES Next Month
• Dell Will Drop the Flashy Vegas Act for CES This Year
• Ultrabook Conga Line Preps for CES 2012

Though Apple is open to additional carrier partners — it recently signed up KDDI as a second to SoftBank — it has had trouble reaching an agreement with NTT DoCoMo. The sticking points between the two companies: The size of the upfront order commitments Apple demands of iPhone carriers, and its dim view of their proprietary apps.

NTT DoCoMo CEO Ryuji Yamada says he’d like to preinstall a few apps on the iPhone, but Apple, which exercises tight control over the device, refuses to allow it. Apple’s view here is that it is protecting iPhone users from the unnecessary bloatware that carriers are fond of slopping onto their devices. Yamada’s view is that he is being denied an opportunity to brand and monetize a phone that will run on his network.

So far, neither party has been able to find a middle ground. “If the introduction of the iPhone results in the mass majority of our products occupied by the iPhone, then that’s a scenario that’s difficult to us to swallow,” Yamada told Dow Jones.

That said, Yamada remains optimistic. “We haven’t given up our hope of introducing the iPhone,” he said.

According to various blog reports, one talks to the Elfoid–as the phone is known–and then the speaker’s voice comes out of the fetus-like device. Worse yet, it has a texture reminiscent of human skin and tickles the recipient when a call comes in. Apparently Osaka University and NTT DoCoMo are the ones responsible for making me feel like I need to shower again.

The video below doesn’t do more than show the Elfoid from various angles and reaffirm the product’s aforementioned creepiness, but I couldn’t help watching it.

From clothes and accessories to gadgets, it seems that some Japanese consumers find limited-edition “brand collaboration” items absolutely irresistible. Step forward NTT DoCoMo, Japan’s largest carrier, with about half of the country’s cellphone subscriptions: DoCoMo just announced a new handset, to be released in March, designed and developed in collaboration with French luxury crystal glass maker Baccarat.

Baccarat, which was founded in the namesake town in eastern France nearly 250 years ago, opened its first Japanese store in Tokyo in 1984. The brand now has six directly-run stores in the country, including two in central Tokyo.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

In the near future, it could become a common feature on all kinds of electronic devices. So what’s next?

NTT DoCoMo Inc. reckons that the next step is to “feel” 3-D images rather than just look at them.

The Japanese mobile carrier’s booth at the Combined Exhibition of Advanced Technologies, or Ceatec, has tiny 3-D screens on display. Each one, about the size of a mobile handset, shows a chameleon perched on a tree, which you can see in 3-D without glasses.

Then you hold a special pen and slowly move it toward the animal. When the pen comes close, the chameleon shoots out its tongue. You can feel the tongue hitting the tip of the pen in your hand.

So how does it work?

Read the rest of this post on the original site

In a product demonstration in its booth at this week’s Combined Exhibition of Advanced Technologies, also known as CEATEC, DoCoMo exhibited a device and mobile application called the “Taion Heart”, translated as the body temperature heart. The white plastic heart fits in the palm of your hand and when squeezed, it registers a pulse reading as well as the pressure with which you are squeezing the device.

That information is relayed by a wireless Bluetooth connection to a mobile phone running the application and is passed onto your partner’s phone, which in turn beams the information to their corresponding Taion Heart.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

SoftBank didn’t say what percentage of those new subscribers purchased iPhones, but it was likely significant, given deluge of pre-orders and massive lines for the iPhone 4 when it first arrived at market. Said a SoftBank spokesperson, “The release of the new iPhone contributed to subscriber gains.”

It most certainly did. According to Tokyo-based MM Research Institute, 1.7 million iPhones were sold in Japan in the fiscal year to March 31. That’s 72 percent of all smartphones sold. SoftBank is going to milk its iPhone exclusive as long as it can.

Today, this no longer appears to be the case–at least in Japan. There, the models will be SIM-locked to Softbank Mobile, which has evidently negotiated an exclusivity deal for the device. Softbank is the exclusive carrier for the iPhone in Japan, so I suppose this shouldn’t come as shock. Still, it is a bit of surprise, since NTT DoCoMo President Ryuji Yamada said in an earnings call last month that the company would sell iPad-compatible micro-SIM cards in time for the device’s launch in the country.

Evidently, Apple (AAPL) has been pleased enough with Softbank’s support for the iPhone to tweak the multiple-carrier distribution plan it had intended for the iPad outside the U.S. Either that or the company has always been open to international SIM-lock exclusivity deals for the device, given the right terms.

I’ve asked Apple for comment and will update here if I’m offered one.

RIM (RIMM) is investigating the problem and says it appears to be specific to the Japanese market. “This issue appears to be specifically limited to the BlackBerry Bold devices sold in Japan since last week and sales of BlackBerry Bold devices in other countries are unaffected by this matter,” the company said in a statement.

Another tough break for the Bold, which has suffered quite a few of them since launch. Back in January U.K. carrier Orange was said to be considering pulling the device from its lineup because of persistent problems.

We’ll have the answer soon enough. “People familiar with the situation” tell The Wall Street Journal that Apple is in talks with NTT DoCoMo and Softbank–two of Japan’s premier wireless carriers–about offering its iPhone in Japan.

Discussions, however, are not going well. Both carriers have balked at Apple’s terms, which include a subscriber revenue share that some estimates put at about 10%. “The negotiations are not going smoothly, as Apple’s conditions are extremely hard to meet,” one source told Reuters. “The ball is in Apple’s court right now.”

But likely not for long. In order to meet its goal of gaining a 1% share of the global cellphone business by the end of 2008, Apple must bring the iPhone to market in Japan. Nomura Research Institute estimates that Apple can sell 2 million to 3 million iPhones annually in Japan–about 5% of the market–if it plays its cards right.