Hasta La Gadget!

The digital lifestyle application in development from Tonchidot, makes its first public appearance in Japan at the fashion trade show Rooms.

Tonchidot’s “Sekai Camera” made its Japanese debut in the most unusual place: at Tokyo fashion trade show Rooms. While the Japanese creators have presented this iPhone application to “tag the real world” at noteworthy expos overseas (like TechCrunch 50 in San Francisco), they had yet to demonstrate it in their home country.

To catch you up, Sekai Camera (“world camera” in Japanese) is an Augmented Reality iPhone application in development that offers users “pop-up” information about their surroundings, as viewed through the camera screen. Touch any of the approaching icons to pull up the corresponding information into the frame or drop it into your “pocket” for later. Put simply, it’s a kind of Second Life spatial interaction for your, err, first life.

Visitors to a space can also tag the place themselves through comments, photos, and eventually voice recordings, viewed by friends or the public depending on filter settings.

But returning to the first point—it was the fashion industry that got a sneak peak of this future-forward technology. More specifically Rooms is a high-profile, yet invitation only, trade show attended by thousands of buyers, designers, and press. Nonetheless these are professionals who, by reputation, are typically more interested in things more tangible and less tech-y.

Trend Potential

We have been covering the increasing convergence of fashion retail and digital lifestyle trends for some time. To read the rest of this review with more depth, as well as connections to similar trends, you’ll find it all in the Trendpool.

Not just a mobile phone, these new models are being marketed as lifestyle accessories to fit users’ specific lifestyle priorities.

KDDI has announced their new AU handset line-up for spring—a product range that indicates an increasing divergence from the idea of an “all-around good phone” into a wide-range collection of phones that are really advanced in one particular function from touchscreens to fashion design.

To that effect, KDDI is offering the Walkman Phone Premium3 from manufacturer Sony Ericsson that promises the best sound quality to date for those who are fans of AU’s Lismo music download service. Then there is the Wooo H001 (created by Hitachi), the world’s first mobile with a 3D image supported 3.1 inch liquid crystal screen, for those who prefer high-tech visuals.

Meanwhile the SH001 is a Sharp phone that excels at photography, with an 8 mega pixel camera loaded on board. And from Kyocera, AU is offering the K001, a phone with a colorful band and customized skin that allows the phone to function like a clutch purse—for the fashion conscious, or perhaps those who are tired of missing important phone calls trying to dig their mobiles out from the bottoms of their massive handbags.

Trend Potential

Hardware has come a long way, but not everyone needs what their phones can do, and prefer them to act as they want them to. From external design to interface and hardware functionality, there are endless ways to create phones to fit very niche markets. Find out how this can help your business by exploring this trend and more in our Trendpool database.