Research & Innovation

It’s important that, as part of the wider scientific community, we constantly strive for excellence in technological research to achieve ‘real world’ applications and benefits for our customers.

Nextep draws on NEC's pool of global and local knowledge. Research plays an essential part in the development of new products and services as well as providing continual improvements of existing product streams. It's exciting to think that there is always something new just over the horizon, ideas that can change the way we think and how we do business. Here are just a few ideas we've had lately:

Bioplastic

About 200 million tons of plastic are produced worldwide every year, and more than 50% of them are not recycled. Petroleum-based products, including plastic, comprise almost 20% of the world’s total world petroleum production, contributing significantly to the emissions of harmful greenhouse gases and thus global warming.

Inside a research lab at NEC Corporation, just outside Tokyo, works Dr. Masatoshi Iji, a man at the forefront of research into bioplastics. Bent over a laboratory bench, he is chopping up a bioplastic resembling a wooden shaft into very fine fibres. Read More

Speech Recognition

A number of products and solutions that use speech as an interface are appearing on the market enabling users to convert speech to text and to automatically retrieve information using speech as an alternative to text input. NEC is a big part of this trend. It has equipped VoToL, a mobile multimedia player marketed by NEC Personal Products, Ltd., with the world’s first speech translation function that can recognize spontaneous speech on a compact terminal. Read More

Quality degradation analysis for large-scale networks

Through this new technology, NGN-compatible protocols will no longer need to be installed in web servers and clients when using current web applications on NGN. As existing web browsers and web servers can be used as they are, it will be possible to make a smooth transition from existing web applications to high-quality services that take advantage of NGNs, such as line authentication and QoS. Read More