I write this blog entry some 10688m above a place called Yakaterinburg , flying back from Tokyo. This is my third visit to Japan in the past few months, working with our Japanese partners. A lot has been said and written about technology in Asia, and particularly in Japan. "Everyone" knows that Japanese like gadgets, but in my short visits I’ve gained some more insights into Mobile technology in Japan that makes me admire the Japanese way of thinking. A quick comment before I start, one thing which fascinated me in Japan, and I’m quite aware that this could be just my personal conditioned experiences, is that influences of tradition are more "felt" in Japan than other places I visited. While Japan is clearly far off from the Samurai days, I could still sense some of the culture and history in contemporarily Japan. Unlike places where the cultural roots seems to have faded.
Back to technology, here are some things I picked up:
Mobile Devices are bulkier than the small, round edges devices I’m used to (I am a big fan of Nokia) : Devices in Japan tend to be big, mostly because of screen size (see below). That took me by surprise, I always thought that Japanese customers prefer small devices.
- Mobile TV - Japanese devices have the capability to receive TV broadcasts. To do that, relevant devices are equipped with a special antenna. People actually site down in trains and watch TV broadcasts. Quality is very good. Apparently Location Based Services are also underway meaning that users receive certain local broadcasts when located in certain areas such as a community TV and others (there are some other interesting applications, but let’s leave it at that).
- There’s an interesting feature to Mobile TV - and that’s connectivity to web based information. When I was in CES earlier this year, I saw all these science fiction home TVs where one day you might be able to browse the web while watching TV (side note: why do all these demo use cases always converge to watching "Sex and the City?"). While it may still be science fiction on home usage in the US, it’s a reality in Mobile TV in Japan. That’s really cool, you can see special links under the Mobile TV screen or relevant web based tickers.
- I’m not sure why people would want to watch TV on their mobiles, on the other hand I hardly watch TV at all (just too many things to do in real life), so I’m probably not the target customer. But fact is that this technology is commercially available in Japan makes them in my mind way more advanced than Western mobile users. I also think that Mobile Advertisement will likely to pick this up. Current Ad solutions I saw are not targeted, there’s an interesting market opportunity there in my mind.
- Mobile Data connections in Japan are far more advanced than we be found in Europe and certainly the US. HSDPA of 7.2Mb is nearly five times faster than in my home country (it’s also different frequency), not to mention hardly any packet drops (and I checked…). I also found it interesting that WiFi networks are not as common as they are in the West, seems as if people rely much more on mobile data networks than wireless devices. This really caught me by surprise.
- SMS / Text Messaging is uncommon in Japan, I saw large portion of the people in the Tokyo underground fiddle around with the mobile devices either playing, or writing messages, at first I was sure they are SMSing, but they are not - they are sending and receiving emails. While push-email in the West is mostly used by business people, in Japan everybody send and receive emails to their mobile phones. Always wired society.
- While Japan is governed by huge corporations, I found the underlying VoIP infrastructure already deployed by Telcos quite advanced as well as VoIP capabilities I did not see anywhere else. Since dealing with large, heavy corporations I expected them to be some what laid-back when it comes to VoIP, I was wrong. But for obvious business confidentiality issues I can’t elaborate.
If you do get a chance - try visiting Japan. It’s not all about technology, the people are very welcoming, food is great, culture is interesting, service is superb and there are some great hiking places in the mountains (wish I could do more of that).
Till next time
Amichay