A respected Japanese mobile phone innovator had high praise for the iPhone. In an interview, he expressed the opinion that Japan could not have possibly created the iPhone.

The AP had an interesting story about Takeshi Natsuno. Natsuno is no featherweight in the local mobile scene – what with him being the father of the much envied i-mode service in Japan. It created news worldwide, heralding a time when Japan was at the forefront of the mobile phone scene. Internet on your phone seemed preposterous then in the late 90s but now is pretty much part of daily life in Japan.

"This kind of device cannot be produced by Japanese manufacturers. Never." said Natsuno to the AP. Strong words from a former NTT DoCoMo employee, and indeed he seemed disillusioned with the current state of affairs in Japan. He has left that behind, choosing instead to become professor of policy management at Keio University.

There’s no denying the iPhone has become an object of fascination in technology-savvy Japan, with reports of long lines to own the stellar creation of Steve Jobs. There are now magazine titles dedicated solely to the iPhone. One wonders what fodder the magazine would have to pad them with – customized iPhones perhaps? Jewel-encrusted or custom-engraved casings? The mind boggles. But with the new apps that keep appearing in Apple’s App Store, there is room for application reviews as well as the potential to encourage Japanese programmers to create localized versions of popular apps or their own ideas to suit Japan’s fun quirks. Anime or manga-themed apps, anyone?

But therein lies the Japanese problem – starting out as a copier of ideas, Japan soon became the place for new technological innovation. The wild, the weird and the quirky tech almost always seemed to come from Japan. Now the rest of the world is catching up and even now, Japan is struggling to break out of the monopoly engineered by its local telcos. Until fairly recently, it was impossible to use foreign phones to access Japan’s telco networks. That has changed somewhat but will Japan’s embracing of the Iphone herald a new openness in Japan? Perhaps it’s too soon to write them off quite yet.

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Entry was posted on Thursday, August 21st, 2008 at 11:28 am under International, iPhone.  Print This Post

Read more entries by Erna Mahyuni.
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