Internet Changes Everything

Livedoor Trial Reflects Changes in Japan

ABC News: Livedoor Trial Reflects Changes in Japan

Trial for Former Internet Star Reflects Japan Grappling With Changing Corporate Culture
By YURI KAGEYAMA
The Associated Press

TOKYO - When the trial of Japan's most famous dot-com entrepreneur opens Monday, a much wider issue will also be before the court: this nation's tenuous shift to a more freewheeling market economy.

Takafumi Horie, 33, founder and former president of Internet startup Livedoor Co., faces charges of securities laws violations in falsifying earnings data to inflate the company's stock price. He has repeatedly said he is innocent.

But in many ways, the Livedoor scandal is more than a story of one cocky tech-savvy man. It has brought far deeper repercussions to Japan's financial world.

Donning T-shirts instead of dark suits, Horie, a dropout of the prestigious University of Tokyo, defied old guard Japan Inc., long dominated by a web of cross-shareholdings in which companies hold stocks in each other to bar outsiders.

Starting about two years ago, Horie tried unsuccessfully to buy a professional baseball team and take over a radio broadcaster that is a key part of a powerful media conglomerate led by Fuji Television Network Inc.

Horie was praised by some as a courageous innovator but scoffed at by others as a brash novice. He appeared on TV talks shows and used his visibility to draw individual investors to Livedoor's stock, raking in millions as the Net portal that Livedoor operated grew increasingly popular.

At one point, Horie seemed destined to celebrity status.

He dated actresses. The Roppongi Hills complex where he lived and worked became synonymous with the beautiful life. He ran for parliament last year and won high-profile backing from the ruling party, although he lost the election. He appeared in TV commercials. He announced he was investing in space travel as a business.

But that's as good as the ride got.

In January, rows of prosecutors marched into Roppongi Hills in a raid that was televised live on nationwide TV. Horie was arrested a week later.

The sell-off of Livedoor's stock that followed triggered a plunge in Tokyo shares dubbed "Livedoor shock" and even shut down trading because the exchange couldn't handle that many trades.

Individual Livedoor investors, estimated to number some 220,000 people at one point, were outraged.

Prosecutors say Horie and other Livedoor executives used dubious methods to buy up other companies, set up "dummy" companies to hide losses and jack up the capital value of their group companies.

Livedoor is suspected of pretending to have an affiliate acquire a company that was already under its control and selling stock in that company to doctor its books, prosecutors say.

Key to the trial is how much Horie knew about such antics and whether he was aware of wrongdoing or if he had conspired with the other executives to fabricate results, as prosecutors contend.

If convicted, he faces a maximum penalty of five years in prison or 5 million yen ($42,000) in fines, or both.

The whole affair stirred up loud criticism of the government for failing to adequately monitor securities transactions and other financial practices because Livedoor's repeated stock splits and aggressive takeovers had been widely known.

Parliament passed a bill in June to tighten oversight of investment funds amid calls for stricter and clearer rules governing the securities market, partly in response to the Livedoor scandal.

But so far, there has been no move to create an independent body that would be equivalent to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Japan only has a smaller team of bureaucrats with lesser punitive authority to do the job, and mostly relies on prosecutors to crack down on such wrongdoing.

Robin Greenwood, assistant professor of finance at Harvard Business School, said that Horie used a loophole in regulations about stock splits to edge up Livedoor shares.

In the U.S., stock splits don't change the value of a company. In Japan, stock splits made shares momentarily unavailable for trade, jacking up the price as supply failed to keep up with demand, he said.

Settlements in Japan were still done with paper shares, while in the U.S., the paper system has long been replaced by electronic trading. That allowed Horie to carry out totally legal stock manipulation, Greenwood said.

"It is somewhat surprising how long it took them to figure out what was going on," he said in an e-mail.

Greenwood and others worry that the Livedoor debacle will keep individual investors away from the market. Some of the efforts Horie represented were positive, such as openly bidding for companies and appealing to investors. But stodgy old-style management could exploit Horie's fall from grace to block sorely needed change.

"It is convenient for Japan's old guard," Greenwood said. "They can claim that Horie was bad news for shareholders, and therefore that this justifies any steps that management might take to entrench themselves."

There's no doubt that Horie symbolizes an emerging new generation of daring Japanese who look remarkably different from the docile "salaryman" who clung to jobs backed by a lifetime employment system, which is gradually unraveling amid global competition.

Horie, released on bail in April, has stuck to his assertion of innocence. The Japanese police and incarceration system are infamous for coaxing confessions out of those in custody.

"I have not admitted to any of the charges, and I did not order or approve illegal acts," Horie said in a statement to the media in May.

Copyright 2006 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

Copyright © 2006 ABC News Internet Ventures

September 2, 2006 at 04:28 PM in Japan | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

More Internet users mobile than wired in Japan

Digital World Tokyo

The number of Internet users in Japan accessing from cellphones exceeded those using it from personal computers in 2005, according to a government report published Tuesday.

At the end of the year there were 69.2 million people using the Internet from mobile devices, compared to 66 million conventional PC users, the Ministry of Information and Communications' annual "Information and Communications in Japan" white paper said. Of these two user groups, 48.6 million use both a mobile device and a conventional PC, it said, giving Japan a total Internet population of 85.3 million users. That's equivalent to two in every three people in the country.

Japan's merchants are keen to cash in on the popularity of mobile Internet services like NTT DoCoMo's i-mode. The number of mobile e-commerce sites is increasing and consumers appear to be taking to shopping by cellphone.

In 2005 the total mobile Internet commerce market was worth ¥724 billion (US$6.3 billion), according to the report. Sales of mobile content like ringtones and wallpapers still make up a large proportion of that. Last year was the first in which sales of conventional goods from mobile Internet sites exceeded that of mobile content, the white paper said.

The move towards faster, always-on fixed-line connections continued. Japan had 23.3 million broadband subscriptions at the end of the year, of which 5.5 million were fiber-to-the-home lines. Such connections are generally capable of speeds of 100Mbps.

Between the two user groups, mobile Internet users access the Internet more frequently. About 55 percent of these users log on at least once per day, compared to 44 percent of PC-based users.

Browsing the web and checking email remain the most popular uses for the Internet, although consumer-generated media is becoming increasingly popular. In March 2006 there were 8.7 million bloggers in Japan versus 7.2 million users of social networking services, the report said.

Telephone services via the Internet such as VoIP. As of March this year there were 10 million IP telephone lines. A newer type of Internet telephone service that allows consumers to keep their existing phone number is also proving popular and there were 1.4 million of these lines by the end of March, the report said.

— Martyn Williams (IDG News Service)

July 5, 2006 at 12:33 AM in Japan | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

New Allegations Emerge Around Japan's Livedoor

The Epoch Times | New Allegations Emerge Around Japan's Livedoor

By Yukari Iwatani Kane
Reuters
Jan 20, 2006

Men watch an electronic share price display at the Tokyo Stock Exchange January 19, 2006 in Tokyo, Japan. An investigation into the Japanese Internet Portal Livedoor has thrown the Japanese stock market into chaos, and Livedoor's shares have gone down over 50%, or over $3 billion. (Koichi Kamoshida/Getty Images)
High-res image (594 x 406 px, 300 dpi)

TOKYO — Prosecutors were set to question top executives of Livedoor Co., the Japanese Internet portal under investigation for violating securities laws, Kyodo news agency said on Friday, as new allegations emerged.

Kyodo, quoting investigative sources, said prosecutors plan to question Livedoor's Chief Financial Officer Ryoji Miyauchi, director Fumito Kumagai and other officials later on Friday.

The Nihon Keizai newspaper and others, citing sources, said prosecutors believe Livedoor mishandled more acquisitions than they initially suspected as they stepped up their investigation.

The news capped a week that saw the apparent suicide of a key figure in the case, the resignation of a company director and a 50 percent plunge in the company's market value that threw the world's second-biggest stock exchange into chaos.

The investigation has put a spotlight on Japanese start-ups that have grown flamboyantly, mainly through aggressive acquisitions in defiance of traditional Japanese business practices that honour harmony and modesty.

Livedoor announced the resignation on Thursday of director Yoshiaki Yamada, an executive at Fuji Television Network Inc. Yamada had joined Livedoor's board two months ago after Fuji reluctantly took a stake in the Internet firm as part of a settlement in which Livedoor agreed to give up a bid to take over Fuji.

The prosecutors' case has been complicated by the apparent suicide of an executive with an investment firm believed to be involved in the transactions in question. The executive, a former confidant of Livedoor Chief Executive Takafumi Horie, was found dead on Wednesday after being questioned by investigators.

Livedoor is due to submit the findings of an internal investigation to the Tokyo Stock Exchange on Friday. The bourse could delist the stock, depending on the contents of the report.

Livedoor shares were hit with a glut of sell orders for the fourth straight day on Friday. The stock has now lost about 52 percent, or $3.3 billion, in value from its total market capitalisation of $6.3 billion before news of the investigation broke on Monday evening.

Fallout from the Livedoor investigation wreaked havoc on the Tokyo Stock Exchange this week, forcing the bourse to shorten its trading hours after investors flooded the market with sell orders and nearly overwhelmed its computer systems on Wednesday.

Total Picture Under Scrutiny

Investigators from the Tokyo District Prosecutors office and the Securities and Exchange Surveillance Commission raided the Internet company's offices late on Monday on suspicion that Livedoor had spread false information to investors.

Domestic media have said the Livedoor group issued new shares to "acquire" companies that were already under its control and then sold them in the market for a profit, which it then used to pad its earnings report.

"Each of the actions are within the boundaries of the law, but when you look at the entire picture the actions are questionable," said Takanobu Takehara, an attorney for Nishimura & Partners in Tokyo.

Takehara said the investigation would likely centre on whether Livedoor executives masterminded a plan to deceive the public for profit and how much control they had over the investment partnership they used in the transactions.

Hideaki Noguchi, who is believed to have committed suicide this week, was a vice president at H.S. Securities, which owned the investment partnership under scrutiny.

Noguchi was also formerly an executive at Livedoor's predecessor company, Livin' on the Edge Co.

Livedoor, known for its aggressive acquisition strategy, has grown rapidly to amass a broad portfolio of nearly 50 Internet-related businesses.

The company's portal site, www.livedoor.co.jp, is one of Japan's most popular Web sites, but its holdings range from consulting firms and software companies to network management, e-commerce and e-finance firms.

Livedoor has been in the spotlight over the last couple of years as Horie made plays to buy a baseball team, take over Fuji Television and run for parliament. All of the attempts failed.

January 20, 2006 at 04:46 PM in Japan | Permalink | TrackBack (150) | Top of page | Blog Home

iPod, other IT products dominate list of popular items this year

Japan Today - News - iPod, other IT products dominate list of popular items this year - Japan's Leading International News Network

Thursday, December 8, 2005 at 07:24 JST
TOKYO — Portable digital audio players including the iPod turned out to be the most popular items in Japan in 2005, while HDD-equipped DVD recorders were close behind in second place, according to results of an Internet consumer survey released Wednesday by Dentsu Inc.

Items related to information technology dominated the top 10 list of the hit products as there were seven of them, including blogs and widescreen flat-panel television sets which came in third and fourth places, Dentsu said.

© 2005 Kyodo News. All rights reserved. No reproduction or republication without written permission.

December 8, 2005 at 12:56 AM in Japan | Permalink | TrackBack (41) | Top of page | Blog Home

Apple iTunes Japan sells 1 mln songs in four days

Apple iTunes Japan sells 1 mln songs in four days - Yahoo! News

Mon Aug 8, 7:29 AM ET

TOKYO (Reuters) - Apple Computer Inc. said on Monday its new iTunes online music store in Japan sold over 1 million songs in its first four days, a strong start for the download service in the world's second-largest music market.

California-based Apple launched iTunes in Japan on Thursday, aiming to win over the country's music lovers with the market's largest library of over 1 million songs and prices that undercut the competition.

Apple has sold more than 500 million songs in 19 countries since it introduced iTunes in the United States over two years ago. The service has also been launched in Britain, France and other major European markets.

Japan, the 20th country, was the quickest to reach 1 million downloads. By doing so, Apple said it had doubled the average monthly total of all current online stores run by other companies in Japan combined.

Until Apple's entry, Japan's undisputed leader in online downloads was Mora, backed by Sony Corp (NYSE:SNE - news). Other services included those run by Yahoo Japan Corp., Excite Japan Co. Ltd. and Oricon Inc.

"We've known that about (400,000 to 500,000 songs) per month is what all the other online music stores in Japan have been doing. The majority of that being Mora," Eddy Cue, Apple's vice president of applications, told Reuters in a phone interview.

"So the fact that we've already done two times that in the first four days is something that we are very, very pleased with."

While iTunes by itself is not a big money maker for Apple, the service has helped drive sales of its iPod portable music players because it offers iPod owners an easy way to download songs, store them on their PC and transfer them to the player.

Apple launched iTunes in Japan with songs from 15 Japanese recording companies including Avex Group Holdings Inc. and Columbia Music Entertainment Inc., as well as content from overseas labels.

But Apple still hasn't reached agreements with Japan's largest recording firm, Sony Music Entertainment, Victor Entertainment Inc. and Warner Music Japan.

Garnering the support of Sony is seen as key because of its stable of star Japanese artists including Ken Hirai and Puffy.

"In all of our launches, we start off with a certain number of labels and then we aggressively move to expand that and we will certainly continue to do that in Japan," Cue said. "Obviously we are hoping Sony joins the music store soon."

Sony said it was in talks with Apple on supplying iTunes Japan with songs, and Victor said it was considering such a move. Warner Music could not immediately be reached for comment.

August 8, 2005 at 10:19 PM in Japan | Permalink | TrackBack (11) | Top of page | Blog Home

The future in your pocket

BBC NEWS | Technology | The future in your pocket

By Mark Ward
Technology Correspondent, BBC News website

If you are a geek or gadget fan, the next 12 months look like they are going to be a lot of fun.

The relentless pace of development in the hi-tech world and rampant competition in many of its sectors, particularly among mobile phone firms, all suggests that 2005 is going to be a very good year.

To begin with, 2005 will be the year that third-generation (3G) mobile phones become inescapable.

The 3 network launched in 2003, Vodafone launched its consumer service in November, Orange followed in early December and T-Mobile and O2 are due to launch in 2005.

The main result of these launches will likely be a slew of good deals for consumers as operators try to poach new customers from rivals and convince existing users to trade up.

Cheap chat

Already the extra capacity in 3G networks lets 3 offer good deals on voice calls at rates that will probably have to be matched by the other operators.

But the shift in technology and low cost of voice calls means that operators lose a significant chunk of their revenue.

"Show me an operator that believes their voice business can sustain them, and I'll write their obituary" said Niel Ransom, chief technology officer at Alcatel.

Close-up of Apple iPod, Apple
2005 promises gadgets galore
Instead operators are likely to push all other things that 3G phones can do such as video messaging and other multimedia capabilities.

Already camera phones look set to challenge digital cameras and are likely to win more fans as multi-megapixel devices go on sale.

But 3G will not have everything its own way. It will face competition from emerging technologies such as Wimax.

This wireless technology can boost data transmission speeds up to 75 megabits per second and works over distances of up to 30 miles.

Kent is likely to be the site of the UK's first Wimax network which is due to go live in 2005 and it could be the way that rural areas get high-speed net access.

Analyst firm Telecom View predicts that Wimax will steal a lot of market share from 3G and will be a clear winner.

Bob Larribeau, principal analyst at Telecom View, said the better return on investment offered by technologies such as Wimax could dent the possible returns of 3G networks.

And the growing ubiquity of wi-fi must not be forgotten either. The technology is popping up in more places than ever and its wider use is only held back by the price differences across countries and suppliers.

Unified message

Moves to unite mobile and fixed phones look set to get more emphasis in 2005 too.

Old-fashioned rotary phone, Eyewire
The net is putting fixed line phones under pressure
For a start, BT looks set to roll out its Bluephone project during the next 12 months.

The service revolves around a hybrid device that uses the mobile networks when you are out and about but switches back to the fixed line when you are at home.

Fixed line phones will also start to get much more serious competition from a technology that has the formidable name of Voice over IP (Voip).

Voip routes calls via the net instead of the fixed line phone network.

Anyone with a broadband connection, which is now more than 50% of the UK's net using population, can use Voip and could slash their monthly phone bills if they used it.

Telecommunications regulator Ofcom has declared 056 to be the area code for Voip calls and 2005 is likely to see a lot more consumer-focused Voip call services starting up.

Home broadband services will also start to increase in speed as dwindling numbers of new users signing force the pace of competition.

If 2004 has been the year of the portable music player, they 2005 looks like it will be the year of the portable media player.

Motorola has just announced a deal with Apple to produce a phone that works with the iTunes service and other hybrid gadgets that sport a big memory and lots of other functions will become commonplace.

The pace of advancement in storage media will continue mean that the cost per megabyte of memory will plummet. Some of those devices will sport huge hard drives letting you store more data than you ever wanted or knew you had.

Convergence could mean that single-function devices start to dwindle in number. Instead every gadget will be able to do almost anything and communicate almost any way you want.

The only downside is that consumers will face a series of tough choices as they are confronted by a bewildering array of gadgets each with an enormous numbers of features and vast data holding capacities.

But that is the kind of problem most gadget fans can live with.

January 3, 2005 at 02:22 AM in Japan | Permalink | TrackBack (13) | Top of page | Blog Home

Power to go: mobiles that do it all

Times Online - World

By Leo Lewis
The British can only watch in wonder as Japan turns the simple handset into a technological marvel

IN A narrow shopping street in the Mita district of Tokyo, the owner of the three-storey Red Frog karaoke box is preparing to go out of business.
Hideo Hotaka does not blame his misfortune on deflation, recession or even the elaborate roadworks on the street outside. The problem, he says, is mobile phones. His former customers, especially the teenagers, used to come to karaoke to listen to the latest pop songs in a big group. Now they download the week’s top ten directly on to their phones.

If they want to sing along, the latest mobile phones have that covered, too: Toshiba has introduced a device that turns the phone handset into a microphone and allows downloaded songs to be streamed through a normal television — complete with the words and the bouncing ball telling you what to sing next.

Mr Hotaka is not alone in his plight. Two shops down, Emiko Takeda’s magazine shop has run into difficulties because of a rising tide of state-of-the-art “shoplifting”.

The picture definition on Japanese camera-phones is now so high that people can stand in a shop, surreptitiously photograph the pages of a magazine and then later read their ill-gotten literature from the screens of their mobile phones.

Japan’s booksellers have risen as one to demand that the Government criminalises this practice. Until legislation is passed they will have to rely on polite but ineffective signs in their shops.

“The problem is that the criminals are respectable people,” Ms Takeda said. “If it were some kid who shoved a magazine into his bag and ran off, you could call the police. You can’t really do that when the shoplifter is a housewife with a flashy mobile phone.”

As the mobile screens have improved — some are the same quality as a digital camera — so the thefts have become more ambitious. Students, for example, are finding that entire textbooks can be photographed and read later at palm-sized convenience.

The publishing industry is suffering badly from the advance of mobile phones in Japan. Where once the train carriages were full of people reading comics or newspapers, passengers now concentrate solely on the screens of their phones. Mobile phone operators say that text-message volumes correspond almost exactly with the commuter rush-hour peaks and troughs.

The latest phones come equipped with a tuner that can — fuzzily — pick up television broadcasts, and several operators have introduced phones with navigation software that shows the user as a moving red blip on an ultra-detailed street atlas of Japan.

The Japanese market is comfortably the most advanced in the world. As the phones themselves have become capable of ever greater feats of engineering and technology, their presence in daily life has become ever more pervasive. Industry experts believe that Japan’s market today is what Britain’s will look like in about 18 months’ time.

The third-generation broadband technology whose introduction has been endlessly postponed in Britain has been in action since mid-2002 in Japan. Some services — such as one that translates a cat’s meowing — have died a death; others — such as one that shows videos of all the baseball home runs hit on a given evening — are a wild success.

The pace continues unabated. In June alone, the Japanese public can look forward to a chip from Hitachi that will let mobile phones play video games at the same frame rate as a PlayStation, software that will upload medical records to their doctor’s computer before they reach the surgery, a program that turns the handset into a voice-activated television remote control and a phone equipped with translation software for six languages.

For Shigeru Katayama, an advertising executive from Mitaka, the morning ritual would be unthinkable without his mobile. Before leaving the house he checks the weather forecast before consulting a chat room to discover which coffee shops in his area have cheap deals on that morning.

On the way into the office, he can drop into a convenience store, point his phone at a machine and be presented with concert tickets for the next evening. If it all makes him late for work, Mr Katayama could always call his boss and have a live video conference call from the train.

The floor manager at Sato Musen, a sprawling electronics shop in Tokyo, is convinced that mobile phones have made otaku or “geeks” out of the entire Japanese population: “Some features they will never use, but people love the idea that it exists. I think the Japanese market is ahead of the rest of the world not just because Japanese phone makers are the best, but because as customers, the Japanese are the most adventurous.”

June 4, 2004 at 08:49 PM in Japan | Permalink | TrackBack (8) | Top of page | Blog Home

Japan Sees High-Tech Toilets, Robots in Future Home

Yahoo! News - Japan Sees High-Tech Toilets, Robots in Future Home

Mon Apr 5, 9:33 PM ET
By Nathan Layne
TOKYO (Reuters) - Imagine getting home from work to be greeted by the family robot, which recognizes your voice and reminds you that you've forgotten your spouse's birthday before alerting you that the hospital has just called. You go to the study and use a touch panel to activate your video messages on a display that takes up half the wall. A doctor appears: "I've been monitoring your urine on the Internet. You're too fat, your sugar level is high and you drink too much beer."

This may sound like a scene from "The Jetsons," the popular science-fiction cartoon from the 1960s that provided a glimpse of what the home and society could look like in 2062, but your home might look more like the Jetsons' in just a matter of years.

Japanese corporations, from toilet maker Toto to electronics makers like Matsushita, are pouring millions into developing products for this home of the future where every appliance is connected to a network, accessible from anywhere at anytime.

"Since the amount of information available will grow tremendously, much will depend on the ability to search intelligently," said Tetsuji Miyano, head of the new business planning office at Matsushita Electric Works (MEW)

"But I think we will see human lives improve in terms of saving time and travel costs" in step with the networking of the home.

MEW is a building materials subsidiary of Matsushita Electric Industrial, maker of Panasonic branded electronics.

While a house full of networked gadgets raises sticky issues such as how to protect private information, the future home will no doubt be kinder to the elderly and disabled, easier on the environment and more connected to the outside.

Matsushita Electric Industrial's vision of the home beyond 2010, on display at its Tokyo showroom, comes complete with a talking robot, a study that looks more like a spaceship cockpit and an iris scanner at the front door.

Naturally, the dining room is high-tech as well. It features a kitchen table with a touch-screen surface that displays images beamed from a projector below. A wide-screen display and vibrating glass speakers are on the adjacent wall.

Sit down for dinner and a jellyfish known as an "agent" swims your way. Each family member has his or her own "agent," which contains personal information and can be commanded with a simple device to download text or images from the Web.

A family might plan a trip together at the table with each member using the Internet to explain where he or she wants to go.

As Matsushita sees it, communication in the future home will be more interactive and computers will be more intuitive -- operated mainly by touch, voice or simple one-button commands.

"The agent knows each family members' hobbies and tastes...and you don't have to use the PC directly," said Nao Kurosawa, a guide at Matsushita's Panasonic Center where the showroom is housed.

"Many elderly and children aren't that comfortable using the (keyboard-operated) PC," she said.

HIGH-TECH TOILETS, PRIVACY CONCERNS

But with consumers unlikely to shell out the extra money for such products and with issues such as the availability of sufficient bandwith not yet resolved, a fully networked house as envisioned by Matsushita is still several years down the road.

For now, the Osaka-based company is testing a service called "Kurashi Net" on a limited basis in the Kansai region in western Japan.

The service allows consumers to control appliances like air-conditioners or microwaves through a central control pad or mobile phone. This means you can switch on your air-conditioner to cool your house before you arrive or use your cell phone to get the oven going for dinner as you drive home from work.

Kurashi Net (kurashi means 'home life' in Japanese) also offers a sensor-based security service that notifies the homeowner's cell phone when a specified window or door is ajar.

But perhaps some of the most interesting work being done by Japanese corporations is in the bathroom, an area in many Japanese homes that is already awash in high-tech gadgetry.

While toilets in Western countries tend to have one basic function: flush, a Japanese toilet might come equipped with a heated seat, a flush sensor and a remote-controlled bidet.

Toto already sells a toilet that tests a person's urine for sugar, useful in treating diabetes and generally monitoring a person's health. Japan's largest toilet maker is working on a networked version of the machine.

"We are doing joint research with a communications firm on how best to gather and store data (from the toilet) and send it safely to the doctor," said Kaoru Nogami, general manager of Toto's restroom product research and development.

At the earliest, Nogami said it would take three years to produce this product. He said that today's version of the Internet was probably not reliable and that one of the main hurdles would be making sure that the network was secure.

Indeed, protecting the private information of consumers will be a major legal issue for manufacturers like Toto and electronics firms looking to outfit the future networked home.

Critics say companies should be doing more to address this concern.

"They talk about how convenient it will be, but they haven't explained to the public about the risks involved or what measures they have made," said Tsutomu Shimizu, a Tokyo-based lawyer.

"Electronics makers will probably be the first party to become the target of a lawsuit if something goes wrong."

April 7, 2004 at 02:05 PM in Japan | Permalink | TrackBack (16) | Top of page | Blog Home

With Internet Fraud Up Sharply, eBay Attracts Vigilantes

With Internet Fraud Up Sharply, eBay Attracts Vigilantes

By KATIE HAFNER

Published: March 20, 2004

AN FRANCISCO, March 19 — Five months ago, Klaus Priebe, a soft-spoken building contractor who said he was sick and tired of fraud on eBay, decided it was time to catch the cheaters at their game.
In one recent auction, he bid as much as $2.5 million on a telescope worth no more than $2,000. He knew he would not have to pay for the telescope because he was sure that it did not exist.
The listing was a fake, he decided, because the seller offered free shipping and was registered in Andorra, a small country in the Pyrenees that is often listed by swindlers. Mr. Priebe said his wild bid was an attempt to protect innocent bidders from falling into the trap he had spotted.

Mr. Priebe, 42, is an eBay vigilante, one of a number of eBay members who are stepping in to fight online auction fraud — a problem they say is getting worse by the week — because they believe that the company does not do enough policing of its own.

But in eBay's view Mr. Priebe and his vigilante brethren are pariahs. Rather than embrace these virtual posses, eBay discourages them, occasionally going so far as to suspend the vigilantes' accounts.

"We love it that people want to help, but there's a right way to do it and a way that isn't constructive or in the interest of a good community marketplace," said Rob Chesnut, eBay's vice president for rules, trust and safety, who added that eBay was doing everything it could to make it safe to buy and sell on its Web site.

EBay, based in San Jose, Calif., has 800 people deployed around the world to fight fraud, he said, and does not need amateur help. "Just like in the offline world," he said, "you can't have people running around taking the law into their hands."

Critics, however, say the company is not only slow to stop fraud, but is loath to reveal how much of it goes on.

"EBay's denial of the extent of the problem is out of control," said Mark Seiden, a computer security consultant in Manhattan who stumbled upon a fake deal for a high-end espresso maker on eBay several months ago and has since uncovered hundreds of fraudulent listings. "They probably think their brand will be stronger if they hide the fraud."

Mr. Priebe, who lives in Pueblo, Colo., is not waiting for someone else to solve the problem. Like other eBay vigilantes, he routinely alerts eBay to listings he believes are fraudulent and sends e-mail messages to people who have bid on a fake item to alert them to the fraud.

"That's a part of safe trading," Mr. Priebe said. "I believe that wholeheartedly. Watch my back and I'll watch yours."

Deception is no stranger to eBay, which has 93 million registered users. Within its warm and fuzzy culture, based on trust and honesty, there have always lurked renegades.

There was the spectacular case in 2000 when a fake Richard Diebenkorn painting was nearly sold for $135,000 on eBay. Travel voucher fraud on eBay became such a problem that the company now requires frequent sellers to register with an independent verification company. The sale of fake rare stamps has spawned watchdog groups both on and off the auction site.

Yet far more rampant than art forgeries and fake collectibles these days are fraudulent listings for expensive consumer goods. Plasma televisions and laptop computers, mountain bikes, fancy espresso machines, treadmills, telescopes, even vehicles are prime candidates to be phantom objects on eBay, sometimes promoted with photos and descriptions lifted straight off the manufacturer's Web site. Often, the seller uses auction software to post dozens of items at once, flooding a category with fake listings.

Last year, some $200 million lost to online fraud was reported to the Federal Trade Commission. And nearly half the 166,000 complaints the agency received last year were about online auctions, a 130 percent increase from 2001. While the F.T.C. does not break out figures by companies, the vast majority of online auctions are conducted on eBay.

"It's gone nuts just since November of last year," said Greg Schiller, a computer and network technician in Aztec, N.M., who says he reports hundreds of fraudulent listings every day to eBay.

Against this tide, online vigilantes have had an impact. Last year, they were instrumental in cornering a pair of swindlers from Arizona who bilked eBay users out of nearly $110,000. Often, they are the ones who doggedly trace the source of the fraud to places like Romania, which appears to be a popular redoubt, although many Romanian swindlers claim to be based in Andorra. Indeed, by late last year, Mr. Chesnut said, more than 100 arrests had been made in Romania alone.

"It's very difficult to find people who are hiding in foreign countries where there's a language barrier and it requires cooperation with foreign agencies," said Deborah Matties, a lawyer in the marketing practices division at the F.T.C. and leader of the commission's task force on Internet auction fraud. But she said the agency did not work with vigilantes to ferret out online auction fraud.

Mr. Schiller and others say they engage in self-help activities in part because they yearn for the days when eBay was a much safer place. "EBay is a wonderful thing," Mr. Schiller said. "But a lot of people are getting ripped off for a lot of money."

The company says vigilantism, like Mr. Priebe's bidding tactics, is not a solution and will not be tolerated. The company also does not allow its members to send e-mail messages to bidders to warn them that they are bidding on something that does not exist, or to post details and item numbers on eBay discussion groups.

"If you allow that sort of activity, even the bad guys start posting about the good guys and you end up with a big free-for-all and a lot of finger pointing," Mr. Chesnut said. "That's not the right way to go about doing things."

EBay estimates that of the 20 million or so items that are for sale on its Web site at any given time, only about 2,000 items, or one-hundredth of 1 percent, are fraudulent. But that figure reflects only those cases that are settled through the eBay buyer protection claim process.

Mr. Seiden, the computer security consultant, says the actual number of fraudulent auctions is considerably higher. "EBay's protections don't apply to many kinds of transactions like Western Union scams, so they go uncounted," he said.

Mr. Chesnut said the company was aware of most of the fraudulent listings that the vigilantes report. But he contends the vigilantes can be mistaken. "There's a lot of information that they might not have at their disposal," he said. Hani Durzy, a spokesman for eBay, said it was "not a rare occurrence where eBay has noticed that vigilantes have disrupted legitimate auctions."

The vigilantes argue that the signs of fraud are quite obvious. A fraudulent seller almost always asks for payment via Western Union. Often there is no feedback from other users. And the seller usually offers to sell the item at a much lower price if the buyer agrees to leave eBay and close the purchase privately.

One common ploy is to set up an auction under the identity of a legitimate eBay user who has received positive responses from buyers in the past. Brad Celmainis, an eBay member in Calgary, Alberta, said that warning signals go up as soon as he sees a seller's history and spots incongruities.

"You'll get some lady who was selling teapots and baby clothes and all of a sudden she's an electronics kingpin," said Mr. Celmainis, who alerts bidders and eBay users whose accounts have been hijacked.

Stirling Smidt, a 28-year-old financial analyst in Wellington, New Zealand, could have used such a tip. He thought he had found a great deal on a digital camera on eBay, and promptly sent off 850 New Zealand dollars ($557) via Western Union to the seller who said she was in London.

"There was a lot of e-mail back and forth between the seller and me," Mr. Smidt said. "Her English was really bad and she kept saying, `I'm just a 57-year-old woman with a sick son and a camera to sell.' Things like that." The camera never arrived.

Ina Steiner, editor and publisher of AuctionBytes.com, an online newsletter about Internet auctions, said she was not a vigilante but she sympathized with their cause.

"If I get ripped off by somebody on eBay and I see they're still selling on eBay and ripping other people off, I want to reach out and warn people," she said. "EBay doesn't look kindly on that."

Mr. Chesnut said the company frequently warned its members to be wary of traps set to steal their account information. Further, he said, the site is now peppered with various warnings about unsafe practices, like sending money via Western Union and going off eBay to complete a transaction.

The company also routinely alerts winning bidders of fraudulent auctions, telling them not to complete the transaction, Mr. Chesnut said. Such was the case with the fake Diebenkorn painting.

Still, it was another eBay user's warning that saved Marianne Houkom. Ms. Houkom, 55, who lives in Newton, Kan., received an e-mail message from Mr. Seiden warning her that the espresso machine she was bidding on did not exist. She said she was horrified, and then relieved when someone outbid her.

Mr. Seiden said he felt obligated to inform bidders in fraudulent auctions because he did not trust eBay to catch all of those schemes. That may be because "the people in eBay seem to vary widely in their competence and understanding of claims of fraud and willingness to investigate," he said.

For his part, Mr. Priebe has tried to reason with some of the hucksters. He said he recently had an interesting if fruitless exchange with someone posting fraudulent auctions who said he was a 16-year-old living in Romania.

"He told me his parents wanted him to make money and that everyone in the U.S. is rich," Mr. Priebe recalled. "I said it isn't really that way and that karma was going to catch up with him one of these days."

March 20, 2004 at 10:51 PM in Japan | Permalink | TrackBack (5) | Top of page | Blog Home

NTT DoCoMo facility isn't quite as secretive as CIA

The home of imode (64K), and FOMA (384K), rich wireless services in Japan - something we can only dream of here.

North American telecoms are introducing phones with colour and camera's, but they are missing the point. Its like painting a Chevrolet with Ferrari Red. It doesn't make it go faster, and doesn't have any of the features of the Ferrari.

NTT DoCoMo facility isn't quite as secretive as CIA :: AO

CBS MarketWatch
NewsTeam | CBS [MarketWatch] | POSTED: 03.03.04 @08:00
YOKOSUKA, Japan - It may not be the Central Intelligence Agency, but NTT DoCoMo also operates its research and development center as if it were a top-secret facility.

Located 30 miles south of Tokyo in hilly inland overlooking Tokyo Bay, DoCoMo's 27-acre R&D complex is home to almost 1,200 employees, or about a sixth of its entire workforce. DoCoMo invests nearly 130 billion yen ($1.1 billion) annually in R&D, or about three percent of its sales.

On Tuesday, Japan's biggest mobile-phone carrier allowed journalists inside the company's R&D center for the first time in several years -- all in the name of demonstrating what so-called fourth-generation will look like when it rolls out the advanced mobile service in 2010.

It's all about speed. Fourth-generation services would allow for data transfer speeds of up to 20 megabytes per second for uplinks and 100 megabytes per second for downlinks -- up to 260 times faster than DoCoMo's popular 3G services, which allow for downlinks of 384 kilobytes per second.

"A mobile carrier investing this much money on research and development is rare in the world," says Kota Kinoshita, DoCoMo's executive vice president and chief technical officer.

DoCoMo has been in the spotlight a lot recently. It reportedly wanted to buy AT&T Wireless of the United States but was turned off by the heated bidding war between Vodafone and Cingular Wireless, which ultimately bought America's third-biggest wireless carrier for a whopping $41 billion.

Of late, DoCoMo has reportedly been considering selling its 20 percent stake in 3 UK due to frustration with its British partner's struggle to get subscribers for its i-mode service, which is popular in Japan.

Some analysts are skeptical about 4G given DoCoMo's already struggles with 3G.

"What may likely decide the fate and popularity of 4G would boil down to a simple payoff of costs and services," said Nagayuki Yamagishi, senior strategist at UFJ Tsubasa Securities. "DoCoMo failed in its three-generation service FOMA. If a user just needs to watch television on the cell phone, 4G's high-speed data transfers won't be necessary."

DoCoMo has just over two million third-generation FOMA services and over 40 million subscribers to second-generation i-mode services.

DoCoMo has said specifications for 4G won't be decided until at least next year.

"The 4G will make richer exchanges of communications possible and introduce a refreshingly comfortable wireless environment," said Toshio Miki, managing director of DoCoMo's multimedia laboratories. "I think virtual-reality communication will be introduced in 4G."

He is referring to technology that will allow 4G users to speak to each other face to face with the use of audio and video.

DoCoMo is also looking to incorporate 3D audio communication technology into fourth-generation telecom services.

The technology would allow users to know where the voice of callers is coming from. There are many ways to use the 3D technology. It could be used at museums where the guidance is given automatically when visitors enter a target area. Visitors would instantly tell the direction of the exhibit by sound direction.

Before launching 4G phones, DoCoMo is planning to introduce the world's first 3.5G phones in the domestic market by the middle of 2005. Halfway between 3G and 4G, 3.5G would cut the cost of transmissions by one third with minimal changes to infrastructure, DoCoMo said.

The 3.5G phones would enable downlinks at a maximum data transmission of 14 megabits per second - up to 35 times as fast as the current DoCoMo's 384 kilobits per second pace. The data transmission would average 2-4 Mbps, it added.

Using a notebook PC connected to a 3.5G phone, the experience isn't that much different from typical broadband high-speed connections. It could be a hit with Internet users if the price is right.

Kinoshita said that DoCoMo's R&D partners include Intel, Texas Instruments, Cisco Systems, Hewlett Packard, Ericsson, Nokia, NEC and Fujitsu.

Yokosuka Research Park is also home to more than 40 national and private research organizations from around the world. The research arms of Matsushita's Panasonic Mobile Communications, Fujitsu and DoCoMo's parent NTT, for example, also have facilities there, developing cutting-edge telecommunications technology.

Osamu Tsukimori is a reporter for CBS MarketWatch.com based in Tokyo. Asia bureau chief Allen Wan contributed to this report.

March 5, 2004 at 09:19 AM in Japan | Permalink | TrackBack (15) | Top of page | Blog Home

In Japan, a Wireless Vision of Future for U.S.

In Japan, a Wireless Vision of Future for U.S. (TechNews.com)

Mobile Internet Is Mainstream as Cell Phones Take Place of Computers

By Anthony Faiola
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, February 19, 2004; Page A01

TOKYO -- In search of a chic cafe hidden in the neon alleys of a teeming Tokyo business district, Hiroki Wai activated the global positioning system on his cell phone and punched in the cafe's phone number. Instantly, a detailed map appeared and a perky female computer voice was navigating Wai toward a hot date with a $9 latte.

"Now turn left; now turn right, walk straight ahead. . . . Hurray, you're here!" the voice chirped from his receiver. A satellite in Earth orbit charted his progress on a full-color street grid displayed on the screen of his cell phone.

"The cell phone is way past being just a phone in Japan," said Wai, 32, a systems engineer who wakes up with his phone alarm at 6:30 a.m. and then uses the phone almost every waking hour to send and receive dozens of e-mails, link remotely to his home-office PC, download music and read newspapers, even novels, during his daily commutes. "For us," he said, "the cell phone is now a way of life."

The cell phone market in the United States is set for a major shake-up after the announcement this week of a $41 billion buyout of AT&T Wireless by Atlanta-based Cingular Wireless, with the merged juggernaut poised to quicken the rollout of such advanced services as access to the mobile Internet and other third-generation, or 3G, technologies. Behind the rush to boost cell phone uses in the United States lies a less flattering truth: In recent years, America has lumbered forward like a John Deere tractor on the mobile information superhighway, while Japan has zoomed ahead like a Z-car.

Technologies considered experimental or novel in the United States have already gone mainstream here, giving rise to an unparalleled cell phone culture. Today, Japan offers a fascinating glimpse into a possible future for Americans: life in a wireless world through the cell phone.

About 70 million Japanese -- 55 percent of the population -- have signed up for Internet access from their cellular phones, a threefold increase from 2000. Cell phones, or keitai in Japanese, are closing in on computers as the device of choice for surfing the Internet. While the Japanese are using their cell phones in the same way many Americans use their laptop computers or personal digital assistants, they also are pulling out their phones to watch TV, navigate labyrinthine city streets with built-in GPS systems, download music, take and transmit home movies, scan bar-coded information, get e-coupons for discounts on food and entertainment, pay bills, play Final Fantasy, even program karaoke machines.

While at least some of these uses are expected to become commonplace in the United States, Japan's penchant for the cutting edge, the cute and the compact has given rise to a particular, occasionally peculiar, keitai culture.

Many young people today even describe their cell phones as extensions of themselves. On subways and trains throughout Japan, keitai addicts, oblivious to the world around them, their hyperactive thumbs furiously typing e-mails on cell phones, have become ubiquitous, even stereotypical sights. One Tokyo TV station recently broadcast a reality show featuring a teenage girl whose cell phone was taken away for one week. She was reduced to tears when she finally got it back.

"I get separation anxiety when I am away from my cell phone. It is part of my identity now," confessed Yoshihisa Amano, 26, who works for a software company in central Tokyo. When he makes or receives a call, Amano creates an identity for himself by projecting an animated character onto the other party's phone screen. Amano controls his alter ego's emotions -- showing sadness, rage or glee -- by pressing different phone keys, and can change characters to suit his mood or caller.

"My keitai is also a video phone, so my callers can actually see me, and I can see them, if we choose," Amano said. He showed a reporter I-chan, a sexy Japanese anime girl in a tight pink sweater and cow-patterned miniskirt who he is now planning to display to friends as his alter ego. "I might not always be looking my best when they call, so I like the characters instead," he said.

On train platforms and highway billboards, cell phone ads dominate the cityscape. The ads underscore the idea that hot new laptops no longer impress the affluent young Japanese; only the latest-model cell phones are turning heads or winning status among peers.

"Cell phones have created extensions of personal space in Japan," said Yuichi Kogure, who teaches a class on keitai culture at Tokyo's Toita Women's College. "You take your world with you when you have your keitai in your hand. In the keitai world, people forget where they are, and women [with cell phones], for instance, can be seen putting on makeup or brushing their hair in the subway, something considered highly rude in Japan in the past. But now, people are walled inside their own little world with their keitai and aren't even aware of what they're doing in public."

In Kyoto, the cell phone culture has generated a new type of university class. Students in more than 52 courses ranging from math to welfare studies at the city's Bukkyo University almost never speak aloud. Rather, they e-mail questions and comments from their cell phones to their professors while in class, and professors answer orally.

"Students can be very shy, and the anonymousness of the system helped them to overcome their shyness," said Kiyoharu Hara, assistant professor of sociology and a mastermind of the university's unusual class communication. "Keitai mail matched the Japanese culture of silently conveying meaning."

Cell phones also have dramatically improved efficiency in marketing. Restaurants advertise immediate discounts on Web sites when they have a slow night, offering price cuts of as much as 15 percent to fill seats with keitai bargain hunters.

But some people complain that so much messaging and surfing with cell phones has resulted in people communicating more, but talking less.

Mutsumi Mukaigawa, 26, an apartment concierge nursing a coffee at Starbucks with one hand, holding her cell phone, decorated with a silver-plated dangling bauble, in the other, has been sending more keitai mails and making fewer calls to her parents, who live four hours north of Tokyo. "My mother just last weekend said my father was sad because I call less and less," she said. "But keitai mail is just so much easier."

Japanese have grown so skilled at writing e-mails on cell phones that many now find it simpler than using computer keyboards. Some have argued that the mobile Internet has taken off in Japan -- as well as nearby South Korea -- because Asian thumbs are smaller and more nimble, and thus more suited to typing on tiny cell phone keys. But the Japanese who launched the service here say size doesn't matter.

Takeshi Natsuno, considered the father of I-mode -- the landmark service of communications giant NTT DoCoMo that granted Japanese easy access to the Internet via cell phones in 1999 -- argues that U.S. cellular phone companies have simply mishandled the concept by employing different signal "standards," or cellular languages, which make it difficult for cell phones to communicate with the Internet.

At the same time, NTT DoCoMo, still the market leader here, encouraged Internet content providers to produce Web sites viewable on cell phone screens by offering them more than 90 percent of the revenue generated from user fees. DoCoMo reaped the benefits as these sites boomed, more subscribers signed up and content providers paid charges for their expanded use of DoCoMo's wireless network.

February 19, 2004 at 07:12 AM in Japan, Wireless | Permalink | TrackBack (142) | Top of page | Blog Home

Japan 3: Technology as it should be

Two simple examples of technology personalisation:

1) ABM Machine: they are silent until you walk up to it, and it immediately greets you and turns on the screen. One bank I saw even has an "avtar' image of a woman greeting you.

2) Ambulance: the usual siren, but at a junction, a voice asking "please stand back and allow us to pass". This is the ultimate in politeness!

December 26, 2003 at 08:57 PM in Japan | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

Competition on phones

i-mode is no longer pervasive here. Competition I have seen, is FOMA (owned by do0-co-mo, as is i-mode), au, Vodaphone. Vodaphone is an interesting entry and they are now officially world-wide given their European roots.

December 25, 2003 at 10:46 AM in Japan | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

Japan 2 - technology friendly but not geeks

Japanese are fascinated by technology, but they are not geeks I've decided. Geekdom is reserved for North Americans, where we get too caught up in the technology, versus using it as a tool.

The current i-mode/ FOMA/ au phones all use pictures, but much differently than I have seen before. You can attach pictures to peoples phone number or email address for example, so when they call, the small window on the outside of the phone displays the persons face. A very simple idea, yet very revealing in how they see technology here.

December 25, 2003 at 10:42 AM in Japan | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

Japan 1

No amount of internet gets you a cup of tea in the morning. So I picked up a coffee instead, by pointing. Its very sobering when communication is so difficult.

Main thing that struck me so far, is the heat ... there must be a 25 degree differential between here and Toronto!

Looked into a couple of banks on the walk to downtown Tsuchiura this morning. Very friendly and low key is how I would characterise the banks. One of the branches if UFJ was full of ABM's in the main branch.

So I took a few pictures which I will publish later.

December 24, 2003 at 11:31 PM in Japan | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

BBC NEWS | Technology | Japan signals mobile future

BBC NEWS | Technology | Japan signals mobile future

Looking forward to Xmas in Tokyo and this article reminds of why I like it there. Technology is part of the culture, and the Japanese don't "appreciate" technology - they live it. When I was there last the FOMA phones were just coming on stream as the next level up from iMode. They run at 384 kbs download speed .... 1/2 the country can only wish for that on their PC, let alone their phone.

BBC NEWS | Technology | Japan signals mobile future

Japan leads the way in mobile phone innovation, as BBC ClickOnline's Richard Taylor reports from Tokyo, one of the most connected cities in the world.

If you want to gaze into the crystal ball for mobile technology, Tokyo is most definitely the place to come to.

In this city it seems like everyone is constantly on the move and a mobile phone has become an indispensable tool of everyday life.

It might help explain why most Tokyoites appear to be surgically attached to their mobiles.

The mobile culture is so deeply entrenched here that there are even charging stations where you can breathe life into a dying mobile phone battery.

This obsession may also help explain why Japan is at the leading edge of mobile developments.

Five years ago, while the rest of us were still struggling with voice calls, the Japanese were streaming ahead with data services like iMode.

Constant evolution

One of the first ever data services, iMode was developed by NTT DoCoMo, an enterprise which has become synonymous with innovation.

For the first time, phones could be used to do everything from checking the weather to playing video clips.

It proved wildly popular, and fuelled the drive towards the third generation of mobile services.

It is approaching two years since 3G became a reality in metropolitan Tokyo, and though take up has been modest all the networks now offer the hi-speed service to virtually the entire population.

"Of course we're hoping to be successful with our 3G offering," said Takumi Suzuki of NTT DoCoMo.

"Looking into the future we see ourselves developing richer and faster mobile communication tools to give mobile phones users a more pleasurable experience."

Even today the network operators are finding different ways of working the benefits of 3G into people's lives, such as video conferencing between a mobile caller and a laptop user.

With the high-speed networks delivering ever more services, the types of devices are constantly evolving.

At first, 3G phones were clunky and ran out of juice quickly. Today they are slimmer, lighter and sport respectable battery life.

Smile for the mobile

Cashing in on the Japanese passion for capturing that special moment, camera phones are now the order of the day.

Camera phones already popular in Japan
The quality has improved to such a degree that here you can take your photo and then go to a booth and get a reasonable quality print.

Camera phones are just beginning to make inroads elsewhere in the world, and industry insiders expect the trickle to become an explosion.

"The camera phone phenomenon that we see in Japan right now will be repeated throughout the world," said Matthew Nicholson of Japanese mobile firm Jphone.

"Just to give you an example, our parent company introduced a service called Vodafone Live, which has the picture messaging function, and they've already reached 1.5 million users within their operating countries.

"Sending and sharing pictures is a universal human trait so just making it easy for people to send pictures, and having handsets that take good pictures, that's really the key. We're only going to see that trend accelerate in the future."

Besides camera phones, development is continuing on other fronts. Games are becoming more sophisticated.

And if you are not tempted by any of those then, for the fashion-conscious there is the Wristomo.

The ultimate in street cool, this wristwatch phone is straight out of James Bond. It has e-mail, internet and synchronisation with your PC.

They sold out within hours when they were launched in Japan in July.

November 24, 2003 at 11:13 PM in Japan | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

BBC NEWS | Technology | Japan leads mobile game craze

BBC NEWS | Technology | Japan leads mobile game craze

Article talks about "going Japanese" in terms of using wireless phones for advanced games and downloads. Judging by the advertising from phone companies, this seems a reasonable assumption.

August 28, 2003 at 03:31 PM in Japan | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home