This is an advert for the NTT Docomo Touch Wood handset — the concept? Well… to highlight the ‘wood’ part of the phone, someone has built a huge staircase out of … wood, along with xylophone parts too. The aim? Play Bach’s ‘Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring’ by dropping a wee wooden ball down the staircase.

Which eventually arrives at…

The product shot.

At least you get the message: The phone’s partly made out of wood. Heh.

(via NCmag.com)

And, as a sweetener for anyone thinking of ditching the mova service and switching to its 3G equivalent FOMA, DoCoMo has said it will waive the usual 2,100 yen fee for the upgrade.

There’s no official timeline on when mova will be officially turned off, with DoCoMo saying it will depend on when users make the transition. While the death of 2G is quite exciting in itself, what’s more interesting is what the company will do with the spectrum that gets freed up – potentially recycling it for new services like machine-to-machine communications or use it for boosting in-home wireless VoIP with femotcells.

InvenSense, whose applications include image stabilisation and navigation, will put the funding towards “company growth and evolv[ing] both the company business and product strategy”. The company reckons motion sensing will take off in mobile gaming and in smart user interfaces.

Motion sensing is a fascinating area, but applications are still in niche and more gimmicky than useful. Still, it’s a chicken and egg problem: phones need to have the appropriate tech inside them to make use of motion-sensitive applications, and without the apps, why put the necessary tech into the handsets? Hopefully, with some funding and some R&D, the motion-sensing people out there can come up with some must-have apps.

DoCoMo is now working on testing handover from one base station to another, and how LTE performs in both indoor and outdoor environments, carrying out the trials near its R&D labs in Yokosuka.

It’s great to see companies making bigger and bigger leaps in bandwidth – good news for efficiency as much as anything. The only downside? DoCoMo expects it won’t finish testing the technology til 2009, so we’re still years away from actually getting our hands on devices and networks that can deliver this speed. Why do operators keep teasing us like this?!

Gizmoz said it will use the cash to will invest into Asian expansion, starting with work in Japan, and also announced today that its service will be compatible with AOL instant messaging service for the first time. However, with DoCoMo Capital as a backer, I’m guessing we’ll be seeing Gizmoz moving more towards mobile offerings. Gizmoz itself is strongly hinting at the same direction highlighting of its Japanese move it’s “a market that leads the world in mobile internet adoption” and stresses its interests in cross-platform services.

According to the paper, DoCoMo is trying to get the disputed device withdrawn from sale, after the operator and its partner Fujitsu filed a request for an injunction with a local court. A number of reports say DoCoMo believes the Softbank mobile looks like its own range of devices targeting older users, with easy-to-read menus.

After February saw the start of a price war in the country, it looks like the Japanese market is only getting tougher.

Earlier reports had suggested that Sony Ericsson would stop supplying devices to DoCoMo altogether, but Sony Ericsson has been denying this and the AFP quotes a spokesman as saying the company has no plans to ditch the Japanese market.

I’ll be interested to find out how NTT DoCoMo and Sony Ericsson will change their plans, but I can’t see the attraction in cutting ties completely – Japan might be a tough market right now, but it’s still practically the centre of the universe for mobile developments.