Since the introduction of the world’s first 3G commercial services in 2001, DOCOMO has been leading the mobile telecom industry as one of the most advanced operators in the world. DOCOMO will introduce next generation broadband radio access LTE which provides 10 times faster speed than current 3G service. This leap in terms of bit rate will promote new service creation much like we experienced in the transition from 2G to 3G during the last decade.

In parallel with the mobile network advancement, service creation over the mobile handsets has changed dramatically in the past few years with the introduction of new smart phones that have an open platform for new applications. It will become more and more important for mobile operators to take full advantage of both the broadband network and sophisticated smart phones to bring an exceptional experience to customers. As such, we work on expanding applicability and usability of mobile handsets as a tool for various personalized services by collaboratively utilizing the capability of both terminal and network.

Since video data will dominate service traffic over the mobile network, it is important to contribute to very efficient media communications for better quality of service. Although our next generation radio access and core networking technologies are expected to provide extremely high bandwidths to customers, video compression still remains essential because it provides a higher quality of service today. And no bandwidth can ever be sufficient for the creative multimedia services of tomorrow. Helping to create the world's most efficient video codec is therefore one of key activities of service innovation. Our media research is not limited to compression to compensate for limited mobile network capacity. We also research innovative media processing technology for efficient media data search and retrieval for various media applications.

We have 4 research projects in this area that cover service aspects of mobile phones, including enhancement of media technology and wireless connectivity:

- Service & Security Project: Research to enhance usability of services by introducing a secure and flexible framework for mobile application development. User interface design for mobile terminals is another hot topic for this project.

- Media Technology Project: Key technologies for picture pattern matching applicable to various services such as Augmented Reality, picture search, etc.

- Video Codec Standardization Project: Standardization activity in the video codec area mainly aiming at mitigating the strain of the increasing video traffic on the network.

- Advanced Connectivity Project: Studies on new services applying peripheral device collaborations such as body area network, home area networks, and smart grid control.