On CE - For Dealers, Distributors and OEMs of Consumer Electronics throughout EMEA

Fujitsu plans to take on the European mobile market next year, following its buying out Toshiba's share of the 2 companies' former joint venture, the Daily Yomiuri reports.

Following the joint venture's dissolving Fujitsu won't be able to brand phones with the "Regza" name, a name Toshiba uses for a LCD TV range.

Toshiba formerly owned 19.9% of Fujitsu Toshiba Mobile Communications, a joint venture launched October 2010. It owns 20% of Japan's mobile market and is the country's second-largest following Sharp.

Fujitsu will now probably integrate the joint venture's assets with its own mobile phone unit, before making plans towards the rest of the world.

Go Toshiba to Sell Share in Phone Business (Daily Yomiuri)

WIMM Labs believes the future will come in small packages -- it unveils the WIMM platform, a miniature computer currently available in a limited number of developer preview kits.

The result of a partnership with Foxconn, the preview kit (known as the WIMM One) is a 1" slab packing a reflective colour touchscreen (160 x 160 resolution), wifi, Bluetooth and GPS radios, vibrate motor, accelerometer and magnetometer.

Running on Android 2.1, it comes complete with "micro apps" (such as world clock and calendar) and pairs with smartphones via Bluetooth to alert users of incoming calls and text messages as well as sharing the phone's network connection.

The preview kit includes a wrist strap in which users can pop in the device (similar those on offer for iPad nanos). Music player and bicycle adapters are also in the works.

WIMM Labs is currently looking for developers (with a public SDK to be available in Q3 2011), as well as licensees willing to make products using the WIMMplatform.

Go WIMM Labs

Editor: It's not a typo... we did mean 2021 and not 2012. This is an excerpt from a speech at SinoCES by Gary Shapiro, CEA President and CEO. Gary has also authored the 2011 New York Times bestseller: The Comeback: How Innovation Will Restore the American Dream.

It’s exciting to think about what technology innovations will be unveiled at the 2012 International CES. Each year, the products launched at CES mold the future of our industry and challenge us to continue to innovate.  I often think about where our industry will be in ten years. Some 20 years ago, I gave a speech predicting the future of consumer technology. Thirteen years later, I was asked by the same organization to review those predictions. Some were extremely accurate. Others were on the right track. And some of my predictions were just plain wrong.

Today, I want to fast forward to the future and offer predictions of where the consumer technology market will be in ten years. So imagine that today is January 10, 2021, and the 2021 International CES has just wrapped up four days of the most innovative product launches in history. Here is just a small sampling of what we saw on the 2021 CES show floor.

In USA, the consumer electronics industry counter-attacked the cable industry in a letter to the government's controlling Federal Communications Commission.

As far back as 1996, the FCC felt compelled to step in and require the cable companies to open access to their networks. Then CableCard was invented to allow consumers to access cable programming and other cable services via the devices made by others.

The cable industry reluctantly walked down that road but slowly enough so the FCC stepped in with AllVid, an updated proposal to let the internet revolution unfold without restrictions of these private cable networks.

Now the CEA say the cable industry has not demonstrated any progress towards a robust retail market for set-tops and is instead trying to forestall commission action to create that market.

"In fact, they confirm that after a decade and a half of product demonstrations and announcements, the mandate established by Congress in Section 629 remains unfulfilled," says the CEA, in a letter to FCC chairman Julius Genachowski.