We’re back from a summer in Japan, with fond memories of new friends, shopping bags full of cheap plastic Gundam action figures and several bottles of fine sake. But I would throw it all under the country’s speedy Shinkansen bullet train for just one more day with my beloved Japanese mobile phone.
For a month, I toted around Vodafone’s 905SH, manufactured by Japan’s Sharp. It sported a stainless steel frame and a striking black 2.6-inch LCD screen, which swiveled 90 degrees to display nine channels of digital television in crisp, widescreen format. It also surfed the Web, served as a debit card, downloaded and played music and took two-megapixel photos. It won my heart. Here in America’s pokey mobile-phone market, we have nothing like it.
Thanks to early investments in high-speed mobile networks, Japan’s cellular telephone industry is about a year and a half ahead of America’s. Everywhere you look, it shows. Subway riders tap messages to friends, listen to music and play games on their handsets. More than half of Japan’s cell-phone users own speedy 3G broadband phones (versus a puny 5 percent in the United States).
The Japanese have enjoyed analog TV on their mobile phones since 2003, but the quality was erratic and users would lose the signal on moving trains. Earlier this year, the carriers unveiled a new digital TV standard, devised solely for mobile devices. The quality is excellent. My phone not only played seamless television but let me record, TiVo-style, up to five hours of TV on a one-gigabyte memory card.
The reason is that the good phone companys are european. ie Sony Ericsson . The same reason that the US are ahead of the world in……well i tried to think of something
In the US, the cell phone carriers can follow the same technology as in Japan. However the market potential is too small. With the annual income of most Americans less than $30,000 only 5% of the poplulation can afford the new device and the MRC pricing structure. Many are also credit challenged – no SSN etc. Further, read some of the comments above – all they want is cheap, unlimited talking and no perks. Wonder why?
I think Ghola is the most accurate…I have lived in Japan for 14 years now, and these people are constantly on the go, with the trains as their main source of transportation. Since they are almost never at home, the phone is viewed as a source of all in one entertainment. “I missed the Yumiori Giants vs. Yokohama Bay Stars game tonight….but wait, I can watch it on the train on my phone while I am going home,” and so forth. There has to be a ‘necessity’ on the part of the consumer to want this stuff. I don’t think we as Americans overall really care if we have so many features….but damn, it is nice to use sometimes!
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