Nokia to pull out of Japanese market

The world's largest cell phone maker is pulling out of one of the world's biggest cellular markets. Nokia said on Thursday that it will stop developing handsets for NTT DoCoMo and Softbank Mobile, effectively ending a push that began five years ago when Nokia re-entered the Japanese market with the launch of 3G services here.

The current global economic conditions pushed Nokia to withdraw from the Japanese market, said Thomas Jonsson, a company spokesman. Faced with lower demand for cell phones the company is examining its operations worldwide and decided that development for the Japanese market is not a priority.

Nokia will keep a research and development center open in Japan and continue its procurement activities. The plan also won't affect its high-end Vertu brand handsets. A recent press report, which Jonsson declined to comment on, said Nokia would launch an MVNO (mobile virtual network operator) next year through which it would provide service for Vertu.

Nokia's decision probably says more about the Japanese market than it does about Nokia. Handsets from NEC, Fujitsu, Sharp, Panasonic and other domestic makers, which are typically developed in close cooperation with carriers and highly tuned to local tastes, are most popular here and no foreign phone maker enjoys the same level of popularity here that it does in other major markets.

The Blockbuster set-top box is here

Blockbuster has officially entered the "battle of the boxes" with the launch of its new set-top box today.

The box will serve movies to TVs over the Internet and is going against Netflix's set-top box solutions (Xbox, Roku, and Tivo). Blockbuster's MediaPoint box allows users to watch thousands of movies without the need of a monthly subscription.

To get the MediaPoint player, made by 2Wire, Blockbuster subscribers will have to pay a one-off $99 fee, which also includes 25 pre-paid movies. After that, users pay between $1.99 and $3.99 for each DVD rented, without a monthly subscription fee.

Netflix's box also costs $99, besides your chosen monthly subscription. But unlike Blockbuster's 2500 "of the best, biggest and most current movies available", Netflix offers its whole 10,000 DVD collection for rental through its box.

The major difference between the MediaPoint box and Netflix's is that Blockbuster does "progressive playback" in comparison to Netflix's streaming, meaning that the video quality is independent of you broadband's connection speed. By progressively downloading the movie on the box (up to five movies storage capacity), Blockbuster's solution can offer a much more consistent video quality. In comparison, Netflix's service which can reduce the movie's quality if your Internet connection slows down

Is BlackBerry Storm better for business than the iPhone?

The Storm is obviously a response by RIM and Verizon Wireless to the runaway success of Apple's iPhone, which is offered exclusively in the U.S. by AT&T.

Features such as a touch-screen-only interface and automatic switching between landscape and portrait modes are sure indicators of that. But the Storm also has some appealing advantages over the iPhone, such as the ability to read and edit Microsoft Office documents.

While Apple has taken steps to make its iPhone enterprise-friendly, RIM has far more experience in that regard. For example, the Storm's e-mail capabilities are basically the same as other current RIM smart phones.

Besides connecting to personal e-mail accounts, Storm works out of the box with Microsoft Exchange, Lotus Domino, Novell GroupWise and, of course, BlackBerry Enterprise Server. And many IT folks are already familiar with BlackBerry's e-mail capabilities, making it easy to integrate the device into existing setups.

The Storm comes with two other significant advantages for enterprise users. The first is DataViz's Documents To Go, which enables you to view and edit Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents.

A longtime staple on Palm smart phones such as the Treo, this application provides seamless access not only to Office documents uploaded from your desktop computer, but also to e-mail attachments. In addition, the BlackBerry Storm has support for cutting and pasting, a significant shortcoming with the iPhone.

In-flight internet access with Virgin America

Monday, Virgin America plans to become the latest airline to offer in-flight Wi-Fi Internet, a service with a problematic past that still promises far-ranging flexibility in entertainment.

The San Francisco-based carrier has scheduled the service for one Airbus A320 aircraft, joining American Airlines as the only carriers in the world to offer full Internet access.

Dubbed Gogo, the service lets passengers browse the Web, use e-mail and instant messaging, download video and connect to secure networks through three wireless access points on the plane. Voice calls over the Internet are not allowed.

If Virgin America's test flight is deemed successful after about a week of flying, the airline will expand the service to 24 other planes in its fleet by mid-2009.

With two carriers offering the service commercially, in-flight Internet is making a serious comeback after a two-year period of dormancy.

The previous generation of in-flight Wi-Fi, operated by Connexion by Boeing, was shut off at the end of 2006. Its satellite-based system proved to be too expensive for domestic carriers, and Connexion couldn't find enough passenger demand for the $30-a-flight service.

TV ads contribute to childhood obesity

Banning fast food advertisements from children’s television programs would reduce the number of overweight children in the U.S. by 18 percent and decrease the number of overweight teens by 14 percent, economists have estimated in a new study.

The researchers used several statistical models to link obesity rates to the amount of time spent viewing fast food advertising, finding that viewing more fast food commercials on television raises the risk of obesity in children. The study appears in this month’s issue of The Journal of Law and Economics.

But the researchers’ estimate relies on older data gathered in the late 1990s, according to Elaine Kolish, a spokesman for the Council of Better Business Bureaus. Since then, two of the largest fast food chains -- Burger King and McDonald’s -- and more than a dozen other packaged food companies have signed on to the council’s Children’s Food and Beverage Advertising Initiative, she said, pledging to advertise only their healthier products to children under age 12.

As a result, both Burger King and McDonald’s now air ads for children’s meals including apple sticks and low-fat milk. “I can’t help think that two huge chains advertising apples and milk to kids is going to be affecting children’s preferences,” Ms. Kolish said.

Only three countries -- Sweden, Norway and Finland -- have banned commercial sponsorship of children’s programs, and study authors acknowledged that the chances of such a ban in the U.S. are slim.

But since ads are a tax-deductible business expense, the researchers also analyzed the potential impact of eliminating federal tax deductions for fast food ads aimed at children. Such a move would curb childhood obesity by 5 to 7 percent, the analysis found.