From “Boy Genius Report” I see that Panasonic is using its television brand, Viera, for a new mobile television phone, the Viera P905iTV. Japan’s NTT DoCoMo has a section about the phone, in Japanese (see below).
The P905iTV features a 3.5–inch LCD with a resolution of 854 x 480 and an amazing contrast ratio of 4,000:1. The phone includes a relatively poor resolution camera — two megapixels — but mobile TV is the big deal.
Of course, don’t count on seeing this phone in the United States. Cellular operators in the United States who moan about the lack of mobile TV subscribers should take a look at the quality available overseas and offer great mobile TV-centric handsets. Hello Sprint, are you listening? Naw, I don’t think you are.
Sony’s cellular branding
The Viera handset represents one of the relatively few times electronics companies are using their non-wireless brands for wireless products. Sony previously began branding some of its phones with its “Bravia” TV moniker.
Sony also began capitalizing on its digital cameras’ popularity by branding Sony Ericsson camera-centric phones with the Cyber-shot name (see below). Years ago, when I first started my camera phone weblog, I suggested that digital camera and cellular phone manufacturers should collaborate to offer camera phones with brands tied to digital cameras.
Except for Sony’s Cyber-shot, I don’t think we’ve seen any other camera manufacturer’s brand on a camera phone, but I could be mistaken. However, in April 2005 Nokia began promoting its affiliation with Carl Zeiss for incorporating the German company’s lenses into camera phones.
Hi Justin,
Thanks for mentioning Casio. Now if only cellular operators in the U.S. would offer five megapixel camera phones!
Posted by: Alan A. Reiter | March 22, 2008 at 05:00 PM
The Casio Exilim is another example of a camera manufacuter's brand on a camera phone. . .its got a 5mp camera on it.
Posted by: Justin | March 21, 2008 at 09:39 AM