Martyn Williams

Once again, the component shops in Tokyo's Akihabara electronics district have beaten Intel Corp. to the punch by putting on display computer motherboards based on engineering samples of two unannounced Intel chipsets.

A new Pentium 4 processor running at 2.4GHz, as yet unannounced by maker Intel Corp., has appeared in the component shops of Tokyo's Akihabara district.

AT&T Corp. has officially launched telecommunication services in Shanghai through a joint-venture company, Shanghai Symphony Telecommunications Co. Ltd., marking the first time a partially foreign-owned telecommunication carrier has offered services in China.

With its third-generation (3G) wireless service barely off the ground, NTT DoCoMo Inc. has begun research and development on fourth-generation (4G) packet wireless technology and started constructing an experimental network system, the company said Monday.

If Sony Corp.'s recently launched Vaio W computer was a song, it would have debuted at number one on the Billboard chart with a bullet.

Hitachi Ltd. plans to increase the amount of money it invests in startup companies involved in bioinformatics and biotechnology. Over the next three years, Hitachi, Japan's largest electronics maker, plans to invest around

Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. has begun shipping sample DDR (double data rate) SDRAM (synchronous dynamic RAM) memory chips that are two steps faster than those used in personal computers today.

NTT DoCoMo Inc., Oracle Corp. and Oracle's Japanese subsidiary have agreed to work together to develop and promote mobile communications services and systems to corporate users, the three companies said Wednesday.