The ramifications are endless. Or not.

-Matsumoto explains objectives for Sharp's cellular phone enterprise

Sharp held a press event o­n the 8th regarding the company's cellular phone business, at which Masafumi Matsumoto (President of Sharp Communication Systems) presented that the company plans o­n investing in cellular phones that feature the Symbian OS next year.

Although the company currently offers phones for NTT DoCoMo and Vodafone domestically, all of these phones have used ITRON.

Mr. Matsumoto said that, "we currently ship 70% of our units domestically, but we would like to bring our international shipments up to 50% of the total. In this case, cellular phones featuring the Symbian OS would be easier to distribute throughout the world, and it would be easier to 'make a differentiation.' While we do not intended to have all of our products utilize the Symbian OS, we would like to gradually increase the percentage of our high-functionality products featuring the Symbian OS."

Also, Mr. Matsumoto said "in the back half of 2005 and in 2006, we will introduce cellular phones supporting terrestrial digital broadcasts," and he predicted that "while it will be about 10-15% of units that support this function at first, but o­nce we achieved a certain spread of the products we will feature the function in all of our units."

Sharp will establish a research and development center inside of the Sharp Communication Systems Headquarters in Higashi Hiroshima by December, and plans o­n carrying out software and hardware development; the company looks as though it will put its full power into the development of phones that take advantage of the Symbian OS and terrestrial digital broadcast functions.

"The products we develop for DoCoMo and Vodafone both have 'SH' model numbers. This of course means 'Sharp,' but it also means 'Sharp Hiroshima.' We would like to offer excellent products to the world from Hiroshima," Matsumoto said ambitiously.

-Expansion of "half step ahead" strategy

A point emphasized often at the press event was how Sharp "wants to demonstrate [their] ability to offer products a 'half step ahead.'"

The company released a picture-mail phone featuring a camera in November of 2000 aimed at Vodafone (J-Phone at the time), released DoCoMo's first camera phone in June of 2002, and read the market for phones with cameras. This can be called an example of how the company successfully introduced a product a "half step ahead."

Mr. Matsumoto said "there are currently 50 million camera phones being used domestically, and we read that we needed to be faster at including a camera in phones. If this was o­ne step early, however, the infrastructure may not have been established, or the balance of function and specification may have been bad, so it would not have sold at all. We have shown that staying a 'half step ahead' is our forte."

Definitely speaking, "half step ahead" means offering a products a half year earlier than the competition; this is a thoroughly followed plan in the company.

"In order to stay a half step ahead, the cooperation of communications industry people, the quick establishment of new supporting services, parts inside and outside of the company, and the cooperation of device makers need to be established. Putting a product features easy to understand in front of a user's eyes are important."

At Sharp, whose pride is also LCD screens, also has parts such as CCD/CMOS sensors, memory, devices, and other technology, which "of the parts used in our cellular phones, from a financial base, 40-50% are Sharp's own products. If the cellular phone enterprise expands, we can also expand our other device enterprises," said Matsumoto.

Although the company has accomplished the 'half step ahead' theory with LCDs and camera phones, Mr. Matsumoto says that "we would like to develop products that demonstrate linkage between non-specific devices such as a Zaurus and AV TVs, as well as those that are set to launch with the new services offered by the communications industry."

Inspired by:
http://k-tai.impress.co.jp/cda/article/news_toppage/19629.html