- "What troubles me is that I may look weird if I'm
talking with the phone pressed between my eyebrows."
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- TOKYO (AFP) -- Japanese telecom
carriers, pioneers of Internet-capable and picture-snapping handsets, have
now come up with the world's first mobile phone that enables users to listen
to calls inside their heads -- by conducting sound through bone.
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- The TS41 handset, manufactured by electronics firm Sanyo,
was put on sale by the Tu-Ka cellphone group this month, drawing healthy
demand from customers who want to hear calls better in busy streets and
other noisy places.
-
- The new phone is equipped with a "Sonic Speaker"
which transmits sounds through vibrations that move from the skull to the
cochlea in the inner ear, instead of relying on the usual method of sound
hitting the outer eardrum.
-
- With the new handset, the key to better hearing in a
noisy situation is to plug your ears to prevent outside noise from drowning
out bone-conducted sounds.
-
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- If the user holds the handset to the top of the head,
the back of the head, cheekbone or jaw and plugs his or her left ear, the
call will be heard internally on the left side.
-
- It is the first time that the bone conduction has been
used in cellphones although the technology has been available for fixed-line
phones in Japan, mostly for elderly people, for the past two years.
-
- The Tu-Ka group has launched a major advertising campaign
for the new cellphone, featuring a young woman and a X-ray image of her
skull using the handset.
-
- A spokesman at Tu-Ka Cellular Tokyo said it was too early
to declare the TS41 a success, but retail store clerks said they were seeing
a healthy demand for it.
-
- "We have lots of inquires from young women thanks
to the television commercial," said Tomoyuki Harasawa, a sales consultant
at a Bic Camera consumer electronics store in Yurakucho, central Tokyo.
-
- "The actual buyers are mostly businessmen in their
30s and 40s," Harasawa said.
-
- "We sell four to five TS41s a day, a good figure
for Tu-Ka, which lags far behind rival mobile operators" such as DoCoMo
and Vodafone.
-
- The cellphone is priced at 7,800 yen (73 dollars) each
at the discount store.
-
- "I don't know if this is going to be a big hit,
but it will be possible for Tu-Ka to raise its market share since this
high-profile handset has improved its brand recognition among consumers,"
Harasawa said.
-
- Tu-Ka firms belong to Japan's second largest telecom
carrier, KDDI group.
-
- But Tu-Ka subscribers account for only a small percentage
of the market, far less than the roughly 20 percent for the "au"
brand in the same KDDI group and the more than 50 percent for industry
leader DoCoMo.
-
- Customers who examined the new phone on the Bic Camera
sales floor had mixed reactions.
-
- Masaya Iwata, a 31-year-old accountant, said the product
was interesting but he was not sure if he would buy it because he uses
his mobile less and less for talking.
-
- "I use my mobile for picture-taking and e-mailing
rather than having conversations," he said.
-
- Japan's top mobile phone carrier NTT DoCoMo launched
"i-mode" phones in February 1999, offering Internet surfing,
e-mailing and video watching on mobile handsets.
-
- And J-Phone, now rebranded Vodafone to underline that
it is controlled by the British-based telecoms giant, launched picture-taking
handsets in November 2000.
-
- Nearly every new mobile handset in Japan now has a built-in
digital camera enabling users to send images taken with their mobiles via
e-mail to other handsets or computers.
-
- Tomohiro Abukawa, a 34-year-old hair stylist, said he
liked the bone-conducting phone, noting railway stations and streets were
often too noisy to talk.
-
- "I may get this as it is also small," he said.
-
- But one woman in her 20s said she found the phone "scary."
"Isn't this bad for your health?" she asked.
-
- Another woman, in her 30s, said she was interested in
the cellphone but was self-conscious.
-
- "What troubles me is that I may look weird if I'm
talking with the phone pressed between my eyebrows," she said.
-
- Copyright © 2004 Agence France Presse. All rights
reserved. The information contained in the AFP News report may not be published,
broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the prior written authority
of Agence France Presse.
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- http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/afp/20040121/tc
_afp/lifestyle_japan_telecom_040121075759
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