This, believe it or not, is just about the most popular way to use the Internet in Japan. Elsewhere in the world, cell phone Net access is mostly a dream still to be realized. But for 8 million Japanese today, the mobile phone is the only way onto the Internet. (Another 15 million use it in combination with PCs.) For teenagers, it’s a Beatlemania-level fad; owning the latest handset for one’s e-mail, instant messaging, and game-playing is a status essential.
But this form of digital (yes, pun intended) behavior can be seen on subways, street corners, and noodle parlors throughout the land. In convenience stores, electronics shops, and seemingly ubiquitous mobile-phone specialty storefronts, you see the hip young mobile Internet user brushing shoulders with salarymen and women, all trying out the latest exotic handsets with high-res color screens, Java emulators, and multitone audio output-so they can download a ring tone that reproduces the first chorus of the theme song to “Titanic.”
My second snapshot captures the scene on the 27th floor of the Sanno Park Tower, a sleek skyscraper with a fine view of the Imperial Palace gardens. This is the “Sky Lobby” for NTT DoCoMo, the dominant mobile phone service in Japan and the provider of the “i-mode” service that has become synonymous with mobile Internet. Businessmen stream out of the elevators shuttling them from the ground floor, some with self-congratulatory smiles at gaining a precious appointment here, while others dab their foreheads with tissue, stressed out at the danger of failing to convince a DoCoMo exec that their firm is a worthy partner. In contrast to the “real” (and unmodulated) Internet, with i-mode there is an actual gatekeeper who can fast-lane you to a huge customer base-and this is the gatekeeper’s lair.
My own appointment is with Kenji Tachikawa, the president of NTT DoCoMo. We meet in a plush conference room many floors above the Sky Lobby. In his 60s, Tachikawa is a wiry, white-haired presence, definitely no pushover. After the customary exchange of meishi (business cards), he eyes my card warily before taking questions.
Why is i-mode so popular? He happily ticks off the components. First is the use of the cell phone handset as the means of access. Second is the aggregation of valuable information and services so that users have very easy access to news headlines, banking exchanges, weather, stock prices and shopping. Finally, a low tariff so that the Internet can be cheap. (Try telling that to teenagers who have to explain to their parents why they’ve racked up thousands of yen in DoCoMo charges.)
His demeanor is stonier on other issues. Should DoCoMo be split from the Japanese telecommunications giant NTT and have to make it on its own? “That is the suggestion of one cabinet member,” he says, choosing not to refer to deregulationist Finance Minister Heizo Takenaka by name. It is clear that Tachikawa, a 38-year NTT man who has moved up the ranks with the steadiness of a repairman scaling a utility pole, disapproves of this notion.
Without even waiting for the question, Tachikawa volunteers that there’s nothing about i-mode that binds it culturally to Japan. He has little patience for the usual litany of reasons why i-mode’s popularity can’t work in places like the United States, where the PC-based Internet is more established, and people spend more time in cars, a less-than-ideal venue for thumb-surfing. “The need for communications on the move is universal,” he says, predicting huge success in the next couple of years as DoCoMo launches services throughout the world with regional partners like AT&T in the United States.
I probe Tachikawa about i-mode’s gatekeeper aspect. For all practical purposes, inclusion in one of the official menus in the official DoCoMo minibrowser is feast or famine for third-party service providers. (The alternative is to have users independently type in those URLs with their thumbs, and maybe bookmark the site for future access.) By their very nature, though, the menus have to be limited-there is little utility in asking customers to scroll through hundreds of choices on that tiny screen. Some companies are doubly blessed-not only does DoCoMo include them on the menu, but handles billing for them. With a press of a button, users can subscribe to a service for a 300 yen [about $2.40] monthly charge on their DoCoMo bills. (DoCoMo takes only 9 percent of this, but takes in all the fees for the connect time and data-transfer fees when people use such services). But Tachikawa also says DoCoMo doesn’t play favorites. When the company rolled out i-mode in 1999, he says, “Most of the people said it would not work. But there were some who had foresight and developed content for us. [Now] many who did not apply [initially] are complaining.”
And what of widely reported problems DoCoMo has had in rolling out its high-bandwidth third-generation (3G) phones? Oh, that’s because the standard hasn’t been nailed down, he says. After further probing, he does concede that Internet software on phones just can’t be as reliable as plain old voice. “We have to educate so that people can understand that unexpected behavior might happen,” he says. When I express skepticism about the cell phone as a device for big-screen tasks like viewing movies, he firmly but politely informs me that 3G phones will be wildly popular with businesses, which will use the devices to transmit documents and host teleconferences on the run.
His cites as an example an insurance company that might let people use the camera-equipped phones to take pictures of their wrecked cars, saving a trip from the adjuster. Having seen actual video pictures taken by a 3G phone (a friend of mine is using one of about 100 test units, an item that’s harder to obtain in Japan than the Maltese Falcon), my guess is that a lot of weird claims payments will be in the mail.
But such a scenario is in keeping with the DoCoMo Weltanschauung, which posits that the networked world can be centered on mobile phones wired through the conventional telephone world. It’s a stark and self-interested contrast to the U.S. supposition that one day we’ll have our devices hooked to ubiquitous wireless bandwidth, without the need of an ever-present host. We’ll all have an opportunity to see who wins when DoCoMo attempts its global invasion in the next couple of years. For an early battlefield result, watch your teenager. If he or she gives up instant messaging for thumb-talk, you’ll know that it’s the Walkman all over again. And the Sanno Park Sky Lobby will be even more crowded than Hachiko Plaza.
