A report from Digital World Tokyo (via Textually.org) has the interesting news that more people in Japan access the Internet through mobile devices than through wired connections, and more frequently. At the end of 2005, an estimated 69.2 million people were using the Internet from mobile devices, compared with 66 million from conventional PCs. This is a startling figure, and one I can only assume comes from a much cheaper data transfer pricing model in Japan compared with elsewhere. We've seen recently that UK providers like O2, Vodafone and T-Mobile are launching high speed mobile services, but they also cost significantly more than fixed line services, and come with much more restrictive limits on data usage, which prevents them from being a competitor for fixed line Internet access.
One side effect of cheap access to mobile internet services in Japan has been an explosion in mobile commerce services, with the Japanese mobile commerce market worth an estimated US$6.3 billion in 2005. 2005 was also the first year that saw sales of conventional goods via mobile websites exceed the sale of mobile-specific content, such as ringtones and video clips.
July 4th, 2006 at 4:42 am
You find the most actual data in the new Whitebook: Information & Communications in Japan 2006
English excerpt (PDF) at
http://www.johotsusintokei.soumu.go.jp/whitepaper/eng/WP2006/press_information01.pdf
July 4th, 2006 at 7:22 am
you should check out these cool 4th of July downloads:
http://www.thecellfreak.com/insane-independence-day-downloads/
July 16th, 2006 at 4:26 am
On a side note, the dotMobi mTLD (mobile top level domain) has just been released and is in the sunrise registration period…the promise of dotMobi is to ensure that those sites with dotMobi extension will be tuned to mobile browsing…
one can expect a number of .mobi web sites – those that conform with standards for mobile browsing – to be online starting Oct 2006
More info on dotMobi can be found at Mobinomy.com – the Dot Mobi Directory, this site also plans to start a dotMobi directory soon
Ec from Home of Home Textiles @ Linens.in