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Visual Showcase Of Japanese Mobiles
A reader writes "Japanese StartUp Nooper.com shares their visual showcase
of Japanese keitai (=mobile phones) culture with the rest of the world.
Nice pictures of the newest java phones, I-mode devices,
the crossing with the highest mobile density in the world, I-mode screengrabs and more.
"
The lack of success sometimes has to do with a product that is in appropriate to the japanes market. Imagine oversized american luxury cars in the japanese market. These do not fit well in a crowded Tokyo traffic jam.
Sometimes it is the Japanese distribution system, which favors home grown products. Japanese rice vs American rice, for example.
And sometimes the products are simply better. The mobile phone market is an obvious example.
In any case, I wonder about the other side of the coin. Why do we not see more Japanese technology here?
Well to some degree, they do dominate the entertainment electronics market. TVs, Stereos, game systems, and the like. All to often the American name is the only thing on the product.
There is a long saga to be told about the decimation of the american market by overseas imports. The result today is that many kids growing up have never known anything else. This is a fascinating story to tell in it's own right.
So now we have a market where there really are no home grown players in the market, and it is controlled by oversea players. The motivation is sort of a reverse economic colonialism.
Keep all of the good stuff at home, and send the profitable stuff to the foreign markets.
This was practiced by many big powers for a long time. Common examples include the British empire vs India, for example. The US vs Europe. etc. It is the usual practice when you have a ready easy market for your goods.
It is a little different with the US as market, but the impulse is the same.
Of course, in the US people have gotten so used to the idea of always having the best or newest technology toy that they feel weird when they find out it isn't always so.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
Remember, this is a society that is into tentacle sex and schoolgirl urine (which you can purchase from some vending machines -- seriously). Get your kicks from holding the phone in front of you (which part of you is up to you) to let the other person see how much your looks have changed since you talked with them an hour ago? They can keep it. It's all theirs.
*shudder*
--
Hmm, maybe the reporters were confused about UMTS and GSM, but who's ever heard of that? So a UMTS device can be on-line constantly and receive individual packets, such as email or pages, without going into some sort of off-hook mode? That's neat, then I want it, and I want it now.
The more I read about DoCoMo and i-mode the more I'm getting the feeling that UMTS is barking up the wrong tree. Unless they're getting a clue and moving away from circuit switching to packet switching, I see western cell phones diverging more and more from what we really want. Which is constant on-line, data/voice on demand, real-time email etc.
Video phones were around a bit before you heard of them in the 80's. They were demonstrated in 1964 and service began in 1970. Big and expensive then.
It seems like this is the only one of all these phones that makes any sense.
I mean - check it out - everything on that page has a camera and a little screen on it. If those are for video then - what the hell is the point of using a video phone if all you ever see is the side of someone's head, and only if you're not even listening to the conversation?