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December 25, 2004
Lessons from Japanese Mobile Phone Use
For those of us in the West who have so often wondered and envied the immense uptake of mobile voice and internet services in Japan, Mizuko Ito offers a wonderful insight into this particular phenomenon in her paper titled "Personal Portable Pedestrian: Lessons from Japanese Mobile Phone Use". (PDF Download)
A strongly recommended read, anyone active in the mobile arena (and not familiar with the Japanese tech culture) should be able to take away some valuable learnings.
For instance, I find interesting that the mid-nineties saw a women's "pager craze", which was a precursor for the keitai, the Japanese name for "mobile" or "cell phone". As for the name, Ito says:
In Japanese, the mobile phone is called a keitai, which might be roughly translated as " a portable" or "something you carry with you". In contrast to the "cellular phone" or the "mobile" which stress technology and function, the Japanese term stresses the relation between user and device.
There are plenty issues about norms and scarce personal space:
In summary, the dense urban ecology of Tokyo, combined with the social and cultural norms that discourage disruptions in shared spaces have contributed to the tendency in Japan to use text-based communication modalities, and to rely heavily in the personal use of the mobile phone.
Apart from that, I should think that some usage patterns might be similar here in the West:
...we found that most mobile communication was done with a small circle of close friends and family, generally 2-5 others but no more than 10
and, about heavy users:
In other words, the connected state is the default and the disconnected state is noted
A must read.
Posted by Irakli at December 25, 2004 10:01 PM
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