Japan's NTT DoCoMo debuted Taiwanese HTC's
HT-03A, the first Google Android-based mobile phone targeting the Japanese
market, on May 19, 2009, Nikkei Electronics reported. Based on the hardware of
HTC Magic, the HT-03A comes with a touch panel and a trackball, similar to
T-Mobile G1, the Android phone manufactured by HTC for T-Mobile of the United
States. Tailor-made for the Japanese market, the HT-03A is embedded with the
iWinn IME (Input Method Editor) Japanese input software, allowing users to
enter Japanese characters using a QWERTY or hiragana-input software keypad. In
addition to a 3.2-inch display and a 3.2MP camera, the HT-03A also sports
support for 7.2Mbps data transmission, wireless LAN (Local Area Network), GPS (Global
Positioning System), and Bluetooth.
Another piece of Android-related news in Japan is
Panasonic's tentative scheme to leverage the Android platform in mobile phone
development, according to a May 21 Nikkei report. The director of the Mobile
Terminal Business Unit at Panasonic Mobile Communications revealed that the
company is mulling the development of an Android-based mobile phone, with the
aim to tap the global market for open source platform Smartphones. Panasonic
projects that the particular market will reach a volume of 100 million units in
three years. No specific timetable for Panasonic's Android phone development has
been revealed, though. Meanwhile, the company is also considering expanding its
mobile phone operations to overseas markets in fiscal 2010, which starts in
April 2010 and ends in March 2011. However, the target regions have not yet been
determined, according to the Nikkei report.