A Japanese proverb
says you can’t see the whole sky through a bamboo tube. It’s a message the
country’s operators took to heart long ago in adopting a uniquely broad view of
the possibilities of communication services.
Where else in the
world can you find apps offering real-time voice translations? Or SMS-based earthquake early warning systems? These are just two
examples of services launched by NTT DoCoMo, the country’s largest operator. A
serial innovator who recognized the importance of a good software experience in
differentiating handsets about a decade before Apple – check out this history of its i-mode platform – only last
month DoCoMo launched a venture capital fund to keep the ideas
flowing for years to come. Plus, a number of Japanese corporations have already
expressed interest in the translation app.
But DoCoMo is not
the only innovator in the Japanese market; Softbank has been equally creative in
its own way. In February, for instance, it announced a partnership to provide
subscribers with remote desktop access and multi-device content management
services. Along with Vodafone, Verizon Wireless and China Mobile, Softbank is
also a co-founder of the Joint Innovation Lab project to develop mobile
services.
SoftBank also enjoyed
exclusivity on the iPhone in Japan until very recently – a huge factor in
SoftBank adding the most new subscribers of any Japanese operator in every year since 2007. Although a no-brainer in
retrospect, this decision to commit so substantially to the iPhone represented
a big risk back in 2008, when the Japanese handset market was still ruled by
homegrown devices.
Either way, it’s
clear that in the land of the katana, operators have long been firmly
positioned at the cutting edge of communication services technology. And in
many ways they have no choice. As of October 2012, Japan has no less than 127 million mobile subscribers and innovation is essential if
operators are to keep them happy. South Korea deservedly gets a lot of press in this area, but paying attention
to developments in Japan also seems a good idea.
After all – as Shabette-Concier, DoCoMo’s voice-command personal agent service
that responds to queries by taking into account user attributes such as age and
gender, is already showing – the phones there now pay attention to you.
K-Tech and Samsung were the leading factors in the technology world with new innovations and the Apps have changed drastically within these few months. The translation convertor is the key feature that the world has added to show a smooth communication interlink with any corner of the planet.
ReplyDeleteThanks for this article. I find it a pain to locate good quality guidance out there when it comes to this topic.
ReplyDelete