June 27, 2006
Japan's Mobile Success Explained
Japan's mobile success explained and compared with Europe, an interesting read by Christine Demsteader on Ericsson.com [via All About Mobile Life]
Excerpts:
“In Europe, a mobile phone is still a phone,” says Ericsson’s Atsuhiko Ohkita, senior market analyst in Tokyo. “In Japan, the ke-tai means web access, e-mail, games, and so on – that’s the definition. Voice is just a very small part of the handset’s function.”
...In Japan, operators design service-compatible handsets, and their unique capabilities become the selling point – the internet phone, the camera phone, the music phone, and so on. This synchronized development spans back to the beginnings of Japan’s mobile revolution.
... The Japanese are more advanced than their global peers when it comes to mobile application development and service adoption. But the size of the gap largely depends on the user group.
Ohkita says: “The difference between high-end users in Japan and Europe is perhaps less than a year. But on average, there is a gap of about two to three years. Low-end European users still only use voice and SMS, and don’t want to try web access.”
“In Japan, 75 percent of the most popular mobile content is pure entertainment – games and music – while 25 percent is known as ‘save time’ content,” Ohkita says.
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