

In Japan, Cellphones Have Become Too Complex to Use - gms
http://www.wired.com/gadgets/wireless/news/2008/06/japan_phones

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markbao
In the Asian countries as well. China has extremely advanced mobile phones
that are absolutely everywhere.

Who knows how the iPhone will affect them? I think it'll have a pretty big
impact, in terms of the UI, design, and application support. NTT DoCoMo, the
(I believe) first to implement the 3G stack and system, and I don't know how
their mobiles compare to the iPhone.

Mobile is a much bigger part of culture in Asia than in the US. It's not like
the regular iPhone/Crackberry addiction and people obsessively reading BGR -
it's simply a piece of technology inseparable from some of them, even more so
than the US, especially in the city.

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TrevorJ
what causes the lag in the US?

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markbao
Like the article said, if consumers want more features. I think it's just that
Asian consumers are willing to pay for a premium for more and more features in
a mobile phone, while that's not necessarily the case here (simpler phones,
etc.) With this, the mobile telecom companies can implement more advanced
systems and features into their mobiles. That's at least my speculation.

Also - forgot to add. Micro-commodities are KING in Asia. QQ, the AIM of
China, offers a MySpace-like social networking system built on top of their
160-million-subscriber instant messaging system, where micro-commodities like
profile customizations for _x_ RMB are just a no-brainer: it's cheap, buy it.
Of course, this generates more sales, which thus generates more profits.

QQ even has their own "currency" - QQ Coin, a virtual currency, a 1:1 coin:RMB
exchange for purchasing virtual (or sometimes even real) merchandise. [1]
2008Q1 revenues for Tencent were $204mln, profits of $77mln at a margin of
38%. [2]

This is definitely evident in the mobile market. Mobile subscribers in the US
are prone to buying some ringtones and customizations, but in China these
micro-commodities generate a lot of purchasers - and a lot of money. It's not
something that we can completely imitate in the US, since it's part of their
culture to purchase these micro-commodities.

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QQ#QQ_Coin>

[2] <http://www.tencent.com/ir/pdf/news20080514a_e.pdf>

