Nintendo's new mobile-phone-size game console, Game Boy Micro, attracted better-than-expected orders on its debut, though less than Game Boy Advance SP had done.
Nintendo, known for software titles featuring characters such as Mario, Donkey Kong and Pokemon, launched what it said was the world's smallest console in Japan a week before the U.S. launch with a price tag of 12,000 yen ($110).
Nintendo hopes to draw women, casual gamers -- those unwilling or unable to spend hours playing games -- and older players with the new compact and stylish device.
The Micro is available in Japan in silver, purple, black and blue, with a fifth "limited edition" design in the color of the once-popular Famicon game console aimed at attracting adults who played with the Famicon as children in the 1980s.
An electronics store clerk in Tokyo said it received advance orders for 70 percent of its Micro stock, mostly for the limited edition.
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Black sheep's BlackBerry: Nokia said it was launching a corporate e-mail system to allow workers at almost any level to send and receive mail from their mobiles.
Nokia Business Center, as the new e-mail system is to be known, seeks to bridge the gap between the world's 650 million corporate e-mail accounts and the elite of about 10 million who have mobile access to their business e-mail inboxes.
The Finnish group, long expected to push into a market which brought success to Research in Motion's (RIMM) BlackBerry devices, said it wanted to make e-mail more cost-effective and available on a wider range of phones.
Nokia's (NOK) e-mail system comes in two modes. A standard version gives office staff basic read/write access to e-mail.
A professional version integrates directly into a company's corporate network directory, giving people direct access to their e-mail on their mobile device in the same way they would expect to use it on their office computer. It also allows the mobile worker to handle hefty e-mail attachments.
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Ring-ring bling-bling: Japanese and South Korean mobile operators are betting future revenue growth on wallet phones -- handsets with embedded chips that allow electronic payments -- but the technology may be slow to take off in the rest of Asia.
Whether the service enjoys the same demand as in Japan and South Korea will depend on the level of security and degree of participation by retailers, banks, content providers and the public transport system.
DoCoMo, Japan's largest cellular operator, was the first to launch a wallet phone, in June last year. The handset contains Sony's (SNE) FeliCa radio frequency identification chip that enables electronic money transactions, identification and ticketing.
DoCoMo, whose name is a play on the Japanese word for "everywhere," has sold more than 5 million wallet phones, and more than a quarter of users have used the service at least once. About 20,000 stores have installed the equipment to allow customers to make payments using their phones, and DoCoMo hopes to increase this figure to between 1 million and 2 million eventually.
Possible stumbling blocks include low usage of credit cards by Japanese consumers as well as security concerns.
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Price of plasma: Matsushita Electric Industrial plans to sell more of its plasma displays to other TV makers next year as it aims to boost display output and take market share from rivals.
A new Matsushita (MC) factory in western Japan will initially boost its annual capacity to 3.5 million panels per year, a calculation based on 42-inch panels, but it will increase output at the factory in late 2006, lifting annual capacity to 5 million units.
The average price of Matsushita plasma TV sets is expected to fall by about 20 percent to 25 percent in 2006, following an expected drop of about 25 percent this year.
The price of plasma TVs is expected to drop from 10,000 yen to about 5,000 yen ($90 to $45) per inch by 2008, when the global market for plasma sets will have expanded to 12 million units, up from an estimated 5 million in 2005.
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Compiled by Keith Axline. Reuters contributed to this report.
