Suica Cards in Kansai

Kyoto City Buses
The city buses in Kyoto are among the last and most prominent means of transport in Japan's major cities that still do not accept payment by IC cards. The buses are scheduled to accept payment by IC cards by spring 2015.

Is this still the case re Kyoto buses?
And
May I also please ask if the Shinki Buses in Himeji will now take SUICA? We have SUICA cards, not ICOCA.....

Thank you

All IC cards are now interchangeable. If you have an ICOCA, you can use it where SUICA and KITACA and SUGICA were used (in almost all cases).

Can't answer your query about the Kyoto buses though.

May I also please ask if the Shinki Buses in Himeji will now take SUICA? We have SUICA cards, not ICOCA.....

No. The native card for those buses is the Nicopa card, which has not joined the recently formed "alliance" between various cards. The only other cards you can use are Pitapa and Icoca, thanks to individual agreements between Nicopa and those two cards. No other card will work, so in particular not the Suica.

P.S. : The correct way to think of the recent card unification is not that is has magically turned your Suica into an Icoca, which can be used wherever an Icoca can be used. Rather, it means that JR West (the operator of Icoca) has decided to start accepting Suica (and a bunch of other cards) in addition to Icoca. However, other operators than JR West also accept the Icoca in addition to their own card, through agreements with JR West. The unification does not automatically extend to them, and they may still not accept any other card, this is the case in particular for Paspy (in the Hiroshima area), and also for Nicopa, which interests us here.

The city buses in Kyoto are among the last and most prominent means of transport in Japan's major cities that still do not accept payment by IC cards. The buses are scheduled to accept payment by IC cards by spring 2015.
Is this still the case re Kyoto buses?

Yes, but there are no updates regarding a specific start date.

Thank you everyone..sorry for late response.

Firas: The correct way to think of the recent card unification is not that is has magically turned your Suica into an ICOCA

I agree. That may be a common misconception.

Firas :Rather, it means that JR West (the operator of ICOCA) has decided to start accepting Suica (and a bunch of other cards) in addition to ICOCA.

To be precise, Suica (of JR-East, Tokyo Monorail and TWR) and ICOCA (of JR-West) had already been compatible as transportation cards since 2004, based on the agreement(s) among the four companies, in Greater Tokyo area and Sendai area of Suica and in Kinki area of ICOCA. (Niigata area of Suica and Okayama-Hiroshima area of ICOCA joined the framework later.)

Just confirming the good news that
Kyoto City Buses
The city buses in Kyoto are among the last and most prominent means of transport in Japan's major cities that still do not accept payment by IC cards. The buses are scheduled to finally accept payment by IC cards from December 24, 2014.]
AND
we can use ICOCA on Himeji buses:

Guess we will buy ICOCA cards: we come to Japan often, so they will be used in future as well: : and refund/use up our Suica balances: only about 1000Y anyway..easy to manage

Thank you all

The above is great news.