Interview with Tim Clark, Editor in Chief of the Japan Internet Report and contributor to Japan Media Review



The success of NTT Docomo's i-mode in Japan has inspired telcos around the globle to try to copy or adapt the model to local markets. Will similar undertakings in Europe or the U.S. ever be as successful?

The success of i-mode is tied into Japanese culture. Japanese teenagers are the most affluent, price-insensitive consumers in the world in my view, and their parents are incredibly indulgent (they pay the bills). What's more, teenagers here manifest certain personality characteristics that make communications via mobile e-mail extremely attractive to them.

But perhaps even more important is the vertically integrated nature of Japan's cellular telephone industry, where carriers control the handset manufacturers, unlike Europe, which is the other way around. Also, the PDC system unique to Japan enables small batteries and featherweight (and therefore extremely small) handsets, which made the cellphone into a wearable fashion accessory.

i-mode is essentially a closed world, allowing easy access to partner content via the central portal. How popular (or important) is the "traditional" Internet in Japan?

Well, not as popular as in Hong Kong, Taiwan, South Korea, the United States, or most countries in Europe. It's very to hard to give accurate diffusion rates, since the government constantly announces overstated statistics, the latest being "50 percent diffusion." But I think the general, or PC-accessed Internet, as it were, is extremely important in Japan as everywhere. "Important" is different from "profitable."

Could you describe the typical mobile lifestyle of a Japanese teen?

It is not uncommon for young girls to have long, continuous "conversations" via e-mail, that stretch out to over 100 messages per day, primarily things like "So what did he say then?" "Really? Gross!" and so forth. Trivial conversations about every day events that would have been carried out over and an hour or more via landline telephone conversation in the old days.

Take Tsukasa, a teenage girl at the age of 15. Though she rarely talks on her mobile handset, on some days she transmits as many as 200 e-mail messages to her friends. Her average telephone bill, consisting primarily of packet fees for e-mail messages, is about US$ 200.

High school clubs announce activities via cell phone e-mail, and university class cancellation alerts are delivered primarily to handsets rather than computers. The reason is simple: students have their mobile phones with them 24 hours a day.

Does this lifestyle have any negative impacts on Japanese culture?

I recently talked to Minoru Sugiyama, a Tokyo-based media strategist. When I asked him whether mobile telephones were a positive factor in improving media literacy, he said no. Contrary to the United States, where the personal computer is the ultimate media literacy tool, in Japan, Internet-enabled cell phones play no such role. Over here, few even understand the term "media literacy".
Younger students in particular tend to feel that they don't need a PC if they have a cell phone.

Do you have a favorite weblog?

I like Joichi Ito, but frankly I rarely look at Weblogs :)

Thank you for your time and answers.


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