Here is the five year old kid?
After five years using the same old bulky mobile phone in a country where people change their phone every three months or so, I decided I should get a first hand experience on the mobile internet and learn what all the fuss is about and why the rest of the planet is getting so excited about the Japanese mobile internet example.
The following is an account of my experience in the market that everybody says leads the way for GPRS, EDGE and eventually 3G and the new killer apps that will make it all the more worthwhile ...
First of all, let me tell you that you are going to be very seriously disappointed if you think the handsets of the future are going to be in the tradition of a Nokia 8xxx.
Buying a mobile in Japan these days may be fun for a five year old but I can assure you there is absolutely nothing that would appeal to any non-Japanese over 20 years of age.
The most important feature appears to be in how many different colours your phone can flash depending on who is calling. Also important is how much memory there is for various ringing tones and animations, which again comes down to the handset acting in as many different ways as imaginable depending on who is calling. And of course it's all got to be in colour. The antenna has to lighten up and some models have screens on the back of the phone so that other people can see some action while you are talking.
Some phones have MP3 players built in but don't think you'd be able to download any music clips using the mobile internet as one song would cost far more to download than the entire CD.
Some other phones have digital cameras built in and yes, you can take a low quality snapshot and message it to someone else's phone. They could then store it and let their phone display your newspaper quality picture when you call them.
The manufacturers appear to have high hopes for the new generation of handsets with Sony Playstation 2 interface. Yes, if you carry that bulky playstation around you could actually sit in a coffee shop at Ginza and play someone via the mobile internet who is somewhere else or perhaps sitting at a different table in the same coffee shop, but only if they, too, carry their playstation around with them.
Before I went shopping I did my homework looking up the features of various handsets on the web. Only one model appealed to me. A Nokia phone on DoCoMo which almost resembles the 8110, but rather ugly. Anyway, I liked the prospect of having a user interface I already know and to be able to beam over my address book from the GSM phone I use abroad. Unfortunately, the Nokia NM502i as it is called has been taken off the market. The kids didn't like it. It didn't have anything flashing up in different colours and the Nokia ringing tones where just too conservative. Infrared inerface? Who would want such a nonsensical feature?!
Believe me, if you have been a GSM user for some time, there is not a single i-mode phone that you would want, not even if they paid you.
The craftsmenship is awful, the keyboards seem as if they wanted to break just by looking at them. These phones don't just look like cheapy cheap Taiwan toys, they definitely are cheapy cheap Taiwan toys.
So, who cares about craftsmenship, design, ergonomics and quality? In three months from now this model will be sooooo out of fashion, sooooo uncool, you will need to get a new one anyway and you will be happy that it dies as it makes it
easy for you to spend another 30000 yen (ca 250 US$) on the latest model.
Well, maybe I am just too old fashioned a kind of guy, so let's have a look at the services. Because services is what it is all about, isn't it ...
Ok, there is email with an editor that allows to edit up to 500 Japanese or up to 1000 Latin characters, cost per message roughly 1 yen, and you don't have to download, the email will arrive automatically in your phone. Great, I think, I can see the value of this. SMS without the obvious restrictions - I am already sold. But hey, wait a moment ... Does it need GPRS, EDGE or 3G to deliver this ? Not quite, so there must be some other killer application around. Oddly enough, 70% of usage (and growing) is email on the Japanese mobile internet, so I am being told.
What else is there ? Oh, yes, the microbrowser and the wealth of special internet sites catering just for this format. Let's see ...
o Weather forecasts - OK
o Sports news - not my cup of tea, but OK
o Traffic information - hmmm, I imagine someone sitting in their car and fiddling with this tiny keyboard ? Don't think so - almost all Japanese cars have GPS based traffic information systems built in these days anyway.
o Train timetables - OK that's probably a great idea for the UK where you spent more time waiting than actually travelling, but here in Japan, where there is a train every 30 secs and even the bullet train has intervals as short as 8 minutes in peak times. I never used a timetable during 10 years being here. There is always a next train just about to arrive, and they are never ever late - no need to bother with timetables for all I can tell.
o NIKKEI stock quotes - OK
o View your phone bill online on your phone - Hey, I like that one.
but where is the killer app that makes all that bandwidth worthwhile ? So, where is all the multimedia content ... Amiusamento ... Amusement ... that's it ...
o Chakushin-Melo: download ringing tones - well ...
o Melo: download more melodies - well ...
o VoiceFactory: download your favourite comedian say something funny - ???
o Anime: download animations - er ...
o Karaoke: just more melodies - oh, well ...
And these are indeed the killer apps. Millions of kids of the Nintendo generation who can hardly speak proper Japanese (zaa zaaa zaaaa zaaaaa = kind like like kind of like like like sort of like in English) pay 315 yen (ca. 2.60 US$) for animations, noise and ringing melodies to make their toys ... er ... mobile phones more appealing to impress other Nintendo kids.
This is what fuels DoCoMo's success. Nothing else to it - really.
Is this what Europe and the rest of the world aims for? One may say "So, what ? as long as it makes money, who cares ?" but I would rather think that this is beginning to look dangerously like another bubble - After all the Japanese have a proven track record of how to hoax the financial world into spending money on hot air. Who bothers with such old fashioned concepts of value creation and productivity gain etc etc. ?!
Maybe I am just an old fashioned kind of guy who can't understand the new trend. But maybe, in a few years from now, we are all talking about the lessons learned from the 3G mobile bubble and some people will tell me "Woa, you're a genius - you knew it all before!".
But do you have to be a genius to figure out that there seems to be something missing? Unless, something unpredictable happens the mobile internet looks like a huge Ponzi scheme of global proportions. Someone will have to pay for it in the end, that is of course, unless something unpredicatble happens that will magically bring economic sense into it. Under different circumstances some people would call this "waiting for a miracle" but I don't want to sound all too negative ;-) And to conclude the account of my shopping for a new Japanese mobile phone, here is how the story ends ...
Unable to find any other killer application than email, I tried to narrow my quest for a handset down to something that wasn't all too expensive and least toy-like...
Well, there wasn't anything, at least not with DoCoMo on i-Mode. Some of the Non i-Mode handsets I fancied, but they are without email of course.
Ok, lets have a look at the competition ... While the Japanese cellular standard is proprietary and incompatible with the rest of the world, there is one network, KDDI, who have a CDMA service: CDMA One. Perhaps, I could have a phone to roam when in the US, that could be handy...
And yes, they have all the same stuff as DoCoMo has on i-Mode, so there is no need to go i-Mode, unless you are a Nintendo kid, because you might get bullied because not having i-Mode is soooo uncool, you may as well come from a leper colony.
Interestingly, all the handsets on CDMA One are far cheaper than on i-Mode. They even have some models that are business user like and appeal to me ...
I go for the Sanyo C405SA, it's got no colors, not flashing antenna, no screen on the back, no MP3 player, no digital camera etc etc. But it is ultra slim with only 9mm, weighs only 62g and despite that it has incredible standby and talk time. It's got a USB port to connect it to a notebook and it doesn't look like a toy, so I won't make a fool out of myself.
The best part of it is that this phone is sooo uncool and unpolular that they sell it at 3000 yen (25 USD) whereas the RRP was 45000 yen. Probably, in a few months from now they will take it off the market. This is the only not-a-toy model with mobile internet capability. Maybe Sanyo should produce a GSM version of it, because I reckon if this thingy would appear on Europe's shelves it would be an instant bestseller.
What I don't quite fathom is that though this is CDMA, roaming is not a service that you can choose as you would in the GSM world. Roaming is only available with one particular handset, which does not have mobile internet capability and is even more unpopular than the Sanyo I got.
Too bad, you can't play your mates back home on your playstation on father's roaming bill while on holidays in a Japanese beach resort some place in Hawaii... Isn't that the killer app the operators would like us to buy into ?
take care
benjamin
Benjamin, benjk0-at-yahoo
Consultant, Japan, n/a
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