The land of the rising sun gave us some new technology today. NTT Docomo Inc. just released the first information about its brand-new mobile spatial audio transmission technology. This allows a phone user to assign a 'spatial position' to each sound during a phone call. In essence, when you're talking on the phone (or online) with your friends, you can pick what direction and distance you hear their voices from.

Docomo claims that this creates a "virtual face-to-face communication environment". I'm a little more skeptical. Having the power to choose how you hear someone is pretty cool, and I don't deny that there will be a lot of applications for this technology. I just doubt that being able to determine what direction someone's words come from is going to give us 'virtual face-to-face' communication. This technology is going to be way more useful for gaming than for social phone calls.

So far Docomo hasn't commercialized their new technology. They seem to be looking at mobile conference calls, tele-education, and online gaming as the primary usage areas for spatial transmission. I agree; the ability to choose where and how you hear what sounds will be useful in a lot of games. It'll also help to make conference calls more organized and understandable.

Docomo will be showing of its new invention on the Docomo PRO series of handsets during Wireless Technology Park 2009 on May 12 and 13.