January 29, 2006
Current handset trends in Japan..What is different from Korea?
Interesting insight from Seong-ju Lee, my favorite reporter for Telecoms Korea on the differences between South Korean and Japanese cell phones.
"The biggest difference was the size of cell phones. Japanese cell phones got bigger when compared with last year.... It is quite a change considering that everyone in Tokyo seemed to have ultra small bar type phone about three or four years ago. Now, Japanese cell phones seemed 20%-30% bigger than the handsets displayed on the shelves of Korean stores.
Another difference from Korea was that majority of people still seemed to love clamshell phones. It seemed that slide phone, which was huge hit in Korea last year, would take some more time to be a new trend among Japanese consumers.
One thing in common between mobile users in Seoul and Tokyo was that people were busy doing something with their cell phones in subway trains. In Tokyo, people usually sent SMS in subway while subway users in Korea increasingly watch mobile TV these days than sending SMS.
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