

Why Japan’s Cellphones Haven’t Gone Global - tokenadult
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/20/technology/20cell.html

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delayclose
The article speaks of excess hardware making the phones "surprisingly clunky",
but really the phones don't have any hardware that you wouldn't find in a top
of the line Nokia, and the software is more or less equally shitty to use.
What the Japanese phones do have is software features that rely on carrier
support (like iphone's visual voice mail) and widely available cheap data
transfer rates, but the actual phones really aren't all that special. Japan
should export the infrastructure first, then worry about the phones.

-The internet browsing thing is basically because a lot of Japanese websites have a "mobile mode", ultra simplistic layout as an option. It's not really a phone feature.

-TV receivers in mobile phones require a special signal to be sent for them (the currently available models can't deal with normal dvb-t, for example [AFAIK]), and there are different standards in use for this in different parts of the world. And well, it just isn't a terribly useful feature in the first place.

-Push email is used to replace SMS, which is pretty cool but that'd require a data plan over here.

On the other hand, Japanese phones generally lack stuff we take for granted:
t-9 text input, spelling dictionaries, they use a slightly different network
standard (FOMA vs 'normal' 3G),... all of which are possible to fix, of
course, but then, it wouldn't be that hard for the competitors to copy their
good features either.

I'd say that if Japanese phones ever become a hit in the west, it's because of
the cool and different designs rather than features.

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jrockway
Yeah, the features in the Japanese market are mostly due to the ease of
expanding infrastructure. I remember getting a plan with Au that only had the
good features in the Tokyo metro area. That was fine, as I never left that
area. Millions of other people were in the same boat. Maybe they left the
Tokyo area once or twice a year, but other than that, never.

In the US, that would never fly. The people that are willing to pay for the
features need them to work in all the "large metro areas", which doesn't mean
"Manhattan" but rather "suburbs of Phoenix" and so on. This makes
infrastructure roll-outs very expensive, and it's why they never happen.

(Incidentally, people in the US and Japan have similar commute times, but the
population density in the US goes down a lot faster as you move away from the
city center. In Tokyo, it's densely packed until you get to the mountains.)

Population density has its advantages; look at everything Japan has that the
US doesn't (100Mbps internet for $20/month, interesting cell-phone features,
amazing rail systems), and population density explains it all. But then, they
don't have 5 bedroom houses for $150,000, either.

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Yrlec
Popluation density doesn't completely explain it. For instance here in Sweden
we also have 100Mbps Internet-connection for about $20-$30/month and flat-rate
3g data-plans and we aren't exactly densily populated (#192 in the world
according to Wikipedia
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_population...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_population_density)).
Here I think it has a lot to do with the fact that government has been pushing
a lot for better IT-infrastructure.

I'm personally I strong believer in the free market, however sometimes the
market is too short-sighted to make investments that will benefit society in
the long run. Infrastructure and education are good examples of that. It's
hard for private investors to get good ROI on things like roads, IT-networks
and schools because it takes many years to get any return and it's hard to
charge people as much as it actually benefits the public.

I saw and interview with Bill Gates where he basically said that this was his
rationale behind the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. The market simply
doesn't maximize the amount of lives saved per dollar and you need non-profit
organizations to do that.

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jsonscripter
And here in Canada we pay 30$/MB for over-the-air data, and a 5Mb (that's
mega-bit, not byte) internet connection is almost 50$ per month. That's also
pretty much the fastest you can get even in the capital (Ottawa). God I feel
like I'm living in a third-world country.

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shiranaihito
Don't feel too bad, Finland has been (and still is) held back too.

Although, now there's one cable ISP that offers 110/5Mbit/s for around 70
Canadian dollars per month.

That's basically the only operator interested in advancing things.

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warfangle
They make the point that Japanese handsets all typically have very
(expensively) custom interfaces. If only there was a free-to-build-upon mobile
operating system with a decent developer toolkit available.

Oh.. wait..

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ncarlson
I lived in Japan from 2002 to 2005. I have to say, one of the first things
that struck me was how crazily advanced their cellphones were. Not only that,
but _ _everyone_ _ had one.

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staunch
Broadcast television is the only cool thing about Japanese phones, that I miss
on my iPhone. I just wish my iPhone could get broadcast (HD?)TV. Is there a
reason it couldn't?

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delayclose
What would you do with HD video on a 480x320 screen?

Anyway, it'd need an extra chip to work, which would make the phone bigger,
and then it'd kill your battery when you used it (receiving signal, decoding
video, playing sound and keeping the screen lit), so it would be useless in
all but a few scenarios, like riding the bus to work (but is there anything
worthwhile on at that time...).

I used to have a TV-tuner for my Game Gear. Used it maybe three times. It's a
useless gimmick 95% of the time.

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Ennis
The article misses a very important point. Carriers have very thorough
certification processes. Imagine each of these companies having to certify
each device. They would go bankrupt! Well maybe not, but they would not make
any money to make it worth while.

ATT has the toughest certification process - so much so that others won't even
look at new phones unless ATT has agreed to certify them. ATT certification is
like a green light to T-mobile and Voda.

They need to standardize on chipsets and software platforms. The other crap
like funky keyboards and lcds are no biggie. Keyword here is scale. Jap phones
don't scale for worldwide distribution right now.

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jrockway
There is no actual technical need for certification, though. Only the GSM
modem needs to be certified for technical reasons, the rest is just so AT&T
can get its advertising all over the phone.

But honestly, Japanese phones are not that amazing. They have pretty cases and
nice incremental features, but they are not that different from US / European
cell-phones. The "internet access" is not the real Internet in many cases.
Japanese phones can also avoid ugly and big QWERTY keyboards because Japanese,
in general, has shorter words than English (and therefore multi-press input
works better).

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DannoHung
What's new new in Japanese cellphones? I've heard about TV, credit card
payment and barcode (or is that just QR code?) scanners for a couple years.

Biometric unlocking is pretty cool, but a little gimmicky. What's killer in
new Japanese phones?

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o_sam_o
If the problem is software related, it could be a good opportunity for
android.

