A new government report claims that for the first time ever, more than half of the people in Japan are now using the Internet. But many are not using the Web at large -- they're using cell phones to access a scaled-down, Japanese language mini-Web built for small screens, slower speeds and minimal keypunching. Most of Japan's Internet users primarily frequent "official" sites provided by NTT DoCoMo and other wireless carriers. The most common way to get to non-carrier Web pages is to send e-mail to an address advertised in magazines and on billboards, television or Web sites. Replies contain embedded URLs, enabling users to get to them by using the handset's 12-button keypad. Most users rarely enter a URL manually.
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"News is all around us -- there are televisions everywhere," says Nobuyuki Amano, 49. "I have no need to read the news on my cell phone." |
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"Typing an Internet address into a handset is a pain," says Chihiro Amano, an 18-year-old high school graduate who sends an average of 100 cell phone e-mail messages per day. "This past year I hardly used the PC at all. My homework problem sets were all handwritten."Chihiro's younger sister, Tsukasa, 15, is even more engrossed in the cell phone lifestyle. Though she rarely talks on her mobile handset, on some days she transmits as many as 200 e-mail messages to her friends. Last month her telephone bill, consisting primarily of packet fees for e-mail messages, was about $213. During a five-minute interview in the Amano family's dining room, she received and responded to two e-mail messages. Tsukasa and other young people here enter Japanese text into their handsets with amazing single-thumb speed, but are far less facile typing English and the ASCII-code periods, slashes, and colons that are the lingua franca of the Internet. But this hurdle -- and the fact that most Web sites are not formatted for viewing on cell phones -- only partially explains why few consumers venture onto the Internet from their handsets. The main reason is that most simply do not feel the need to do so. The carriers' "walled gardens" are rich with preselected content. Consumers are bombarded with cell phone-specific offers, "specials" and other slick solicitations from magazines, television, billboards and direct-mail advertisements. Users get everything they need without having to search. "There's almost no need for people to actively seek out information on their own," says Hanamoto. "Users are given information over cell phones -- they don't proactively look for it. This passive acceptance of 'push' content reflects a fundamental problem with Japan's educational system." The result is a surprisingly passive approach to information gathering and media use via cell phones. While news headline and summary services are available via the carriers' networks, they attract only a fraction of the number of subscribers to entertainment and "lifestyle" offerings, such as ringtone downloads, cartoon character screensavers, weather reports, map downloads and train timetables. Many news service subscribers are interested primarily in sports scores or other "flash" updates. "News is all around us -- there are televisions everywhere. I have no need to read the news on my cell phone," says Chihiro's father Nobuyuki Amano, 49. None of the five cell-phone-carrying members of the Amano family use their handsets to read news stories, with one exception. During the World Cup soccer series held in Japan last year, Kazumi, Nobuyuki's wife, and Meguru, the couple's 12-year-old son, signed up for soccer match updates delivered by e-mail.
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