Stories by Jay Alabaster

Japanese mobile platform operator DeNA said Wednesday it will offer its core game software on the Aliyun mobile OS developed by Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba Group.

Salesforce.com's first data center in Japan has begun operations, the company said Wednesday.

Hitachi Global Storage Technologies (Hitachi GST) said Monday it began shipments of its first 4TB, 3.5-inch hard drive, targeted at the PC market, three months after rival Seagate launched its own version.

Using concepts from IT and networking, a Japanese consortium plans to develop large-scale energy grids that will handle power the way the Internet handles data, using "routers" and "service providers" to efficiently manage and direct the flow of electricity.

Panasonic said Friday it would venture abroad to sell smartphones, beginning with Europe in March and then expanding to the U.S., China, and rest of Asia.

A Toshiba executive said his company will look to differentiate its tablets in emerging countries by pre-loading them with exclusive, local content.

A Sharp executive said Thursday he was not concerned with the introduction of a rumored "iTV" designed by Steve Jobs and other smart TVs in the U.S. market, and that his company is focused on selling large-screen sets with traditional features.

NTT DoCoMo and a unit of electronics giant Omron said Wednesday they will form a joint venture to produce products and services that record and analyze personal health data.

Fuji Xerox will launch a new cloud storage service that hooks directly into its multifunction copiers next week, allowing documents to be uploaded by scan or fax, then edited or downloaded by computer or phone.

Japanese mobile game provider Gree said Tuesday it would launch a new gaming platform next year as it looks to take on heavyweights like Facebook and Zynga.

Renesas Electronics will upgrade its Japanese factories so that they can be up and running within a month after a major quake like the one that struck Japan in March.

NTT DoCoMo, Japan's largest mobile carrier, said Tuesday it will strongly back a new TV service for smartphones to launch next year, and will work to promote the technology internationally.

Japanese component maker Rohm said it has developed an experimental chip that can send and receive signals at terahertz-range frequencies, which can carry data at speeds of up to 30Gbps and penetrate clothing and paper.

Hitachi plans to aggressively pursue large cloud computing projects and market software that will integrate data from infrastructure across entire cities, it said Thursday.

Qualcomm's long-awaited Mirasol reflective color screen technology is on the market, in an e-reader that launched in South Korea on Tuesday.