SunPower is signing up residential solar leases at a nice pace in the U.S. while seeing a good demand for its highly efficient solar panels in Japan’s residential market. The company is still posting losses, though it’s doing better than in previous quarters. Read more »
For the first time Apple’s iBookstore will offer paid ebooks in the Japanese market, from major Japanese publishers including Kodansha and KADOKAWA. The iBooks 3.1 update also brings reading improvements for other Asian languages. Read more »
The Justice Department is raising security questions over the Sprint-Softbank deal, and has asked the FCC to defer any action on the deal until it and other government agencies complete their review. Read more »
Forget financial metrics and economies of scale. If Softbank succeeds in taking over Sprint this year, we just want to see one thing: Softbank’s bizarre but highly entertaining TV advertising on U.S. screens. Read more »
Gawker Media has embarked on an ambitious international expansion plan, including the launch of a new partnership with the Times of India. The network also has a Spanish-language site and a series of Brazilian sites, and founder Nick Denton says China is next. Read more at paidContent »
Apple will launch a fully fledged iBookstore in Japan this year. Kobo, Kindle and Google all launched Japanese ebookstores in 2012 — greasing the wheels for Apple’s launch in a country that has been slow to embrace ebooks. Read more at paidContent »
NTT DoCoMo is letting Boingo’s customers onto its 55,000-node strong hotspot network in Japan, increasing Boingo’s presence there to 60,000 hotspots. In turn DoCoMo customers get access to Boingo’s network of 600,000 hotspots. Read more »
In just two years, the US and Canada have spawned 15 LTE networks and 21.5 million LTE subscriptions, according to Wireless Intelligence. Verizon was the first major operator to launch LTE, and it’s used its head start well, racking up 14.9 million 4G connections. Read more »
Not all fiber optic cable is created equal, and miles of older fiber deployed in Japan aren’t able to keep up with the latests electronics. This is why a test that delivered 8Tbps of bandwidth across DSF fiber in Japan is s big deal. Read more »
Japanese youth are choosing LTE over fiber to the home connections, which has forced NTT to drop prices for its wireline service. Will the possibility of that kind of cost cutting inspire applications developers to build must-have services for wireline too? Read more »
The iPhone drove Softbank’s enormous growth for years, but now Japan’s third largest carrier is looking to grow by other means. It’s bidding for smaller competitor eAccess, which would not only boost its subscribers but give it substantial 4G ammunition in the mobile broadband wars. Read more »
New laws make downloading, as well as uploading, content illegally an offence punishable by a prison term and a large fine in Japan, in contrast with the emerging approach elsewhere. Read more at paidContent »
Google added new Japanese reading features to its ebooks app yesterday and is now selling the Nexus 7, ebooks and movies through the Google Play store in Japan. Kobo expanded to Japan in July, and Kindle is expected to launch there in October. Read more at paidContent »
Seth McFarlane’s performance on Saturday Night Live became available on Hulu Japan just hours after it aired on NBC in the U.S., and upcoming episodes will be released in the country just as fast. But don’t expect Hollywood to give up on international windows altogether. Read more »
Access to four out of five Anime shows that air on TV in Japan, in HD, and on the same day they’re available to Japanese audiences: These kinds of perks have helped Crunchyroll to get to 100,000 paying subscribers. Now it’s looking to expand its focus. Read more »
Sony VP Michael Aragon is trying to realise the corporation’s dream of uniting home electronics hardware and digital content. But, to do it, he will need to rely on rivals’ gadgets, as well as its own. Read more at paidContent »
Fon may have launched in Madrid, but lately the company taking on a very Japanese flavor. According to the company, which pioneered the concept of a global community Wi-Fi network, 1 million or a full one-sixth of its global access points now reside in Japan. Read more »
The Kobo e-reader looks like becoming an e-books success in Japan following its acquisition by Pinterest investor Rakuten. Read more at paidContent »
After acquiring and investing in e-books’ Kobo and social sharing’s Pinterest, Japanese e-commerce giant Rakuten rolls both out at home in the same week. Read more at paidContent »
Fittingly for a company that is now owned by Japanese e-commerce giant Rakuten, Kobo is officially launching its e-reader and digital bookstore in Japan in July. The Kobo Touch e-reader will be available for pre-order July 2, and a full digital bookstore opens July 19. Read more at paidContent »
It seems the world has a new digital media M&A power player. Fresh from buying Play.com, Kobo and a piece of Pinterest, Japanese e-commerce giant Rakuten is acquiring Spanish TV and movie streaming service Wuaki.tv. Read more at paidContent »
Reports are coming from Japan that Amazon is forming an MVNO. If true, it would be an interesting experiment for Amazon, expanding its mobile business beyond selling devices, apps and e-books to selling connectivity itself. But I suspect this is nothing more than an experiment. Read more »
Kyocera’s first previewed its new ceramic transducer audio technology last week, and now it’s already making it into its first phones. The two devices are for the Japanese market only, but Kyocera said that the technology would be available in U.S. phones within 6-12 months. Read more »
Japan’s largest mobile telco is about to buy in to mobile media content in Europe and farther afield, by acquiring one of the space’s pioneer companies. Read more at paidContent »
Kyocera thinks the old audio speaker in your mobile phone is passé. There are too many steps: a diaphragm vibrates to produce sound waves that travel down your ear to your eardrum. Kyocera would rather just skip ahead and funnel sound directly into your inner ear. Read more »
South Korea, Japan and some European countries dominate the top lists when it comes to broadband, a report from Akamai finds. The quarterly State of the Internet report puts the South Korean city of Taegu at the top of the 100 fastest cities. Read more »
Six months after first reports emerged Amazon was negotiating to take e-books Japan, it has reportedly struck its first such deal. Read more at paidContent »
Hulu just cut the subscription price of its Japanese video service by a third. The company is now charging the equivalent of $12 per month in Japan, as opposed to more than $18 before the price change. The move mimics a similar step in the U.S.. Read more »
Xbox hacker and co-founder of the Chumby project, Bunnie Huang, has designed an open-source Geiger counter to help citizens in Japan detect radiation in the wake of the nuclear disaster, Huang writes on his blog. Read more »
The one-year anniversary of the Fukushima disaster, which claimed the lives of 19,000 and left another 325,000 without permanent housing, was observed on Sunday. In the wake of the disaster, Japan has reassessed its energy policy, and there’s now a massive cleantech opportunity in the country ... Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Kindle may launch in Japan and Brazil in 2012, according to reports published in the last week. Read more at paidContent »
Disney (NYSE: DIS) Mobile, the short-lived U.S. MVNO that found a new lease of life in Japan through a Softbank JV in 2008, has now launched… Read more at paidContent »
The ongoing, back-and-forth legal fight that is the Apple/Samsung patent dispute today took on a new dimension in one of its key battlegroun… Read more at paidContent »
Japan’s eAccess isn’t deploying any old LTE network. It’s going for broke, pushing the upper limits of the technology to launch a network that can support speeds of 300 Mbps. That makes Verizon’s LTE network, which can breach 25 Mbps on a good day, seem pokey. Read more »
Although we live in an AC-dominated world, DC seems poised for a comeback, particularly in data centers. Facebook adopted a DC architecture in its Prineville, Ore., data center. SAP spent $128,000 retrofitting a datacenter at its offices in Palo Alto, Calif., to rely on DC power. Read more »
Yahoo (NSDQ: YHOO) faced a pretty big whack of upheavals in 2011 — not least of which was the none-too-quiet departure of their outspoken f… Read more at paidContent »
The smartphone and tablet buying rush over the holidays spilled over into a corresponding deluge of app downloads, with the total weekly num… Read more at paidContent »
Imagine a land where mobile advertising meets all the lofty forecasts. That land is Japan, which is showing the industry the future of the s… Read more at paidContent »
Smartphone penetration is slowly approaching the tipping point where it will be more common to have a smartphone than a feature phone among… Read more at paidContent »
Two more advances in the ongoing, international fight between Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) and Android tablet maker Samsung over alleged patent violat… Read more at paidContent »
