Cell Phones: Japan vs. the United States 539
Stirland writes "Cell phones/Connectivity: Japan and the United States: Worlds Apart on Wireless. Interesting analysis of the economic and cultural reasons for why the Japanese kick Americans' butts when it comes to wireless cell phone technology and usage."
There's a reason for all of this... (Score:4, Insightful)
The United States has a very, very, very large land mass compared to Japan or Finland, or any other country in Europe that has cooler cell phone technology than we do.
It's simply very, very expensive and time consuming for companies to roll out services that *might* get the public interested...
So while I would very much like to have video on my phone or simply be able to buy a Dr Pepper out of a soda machine, the sheer size of the United States makes it difficult for such widespread agreements on standards or progress in new technology...
Let's make a distinction (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes, I suppose in 128x128 resolution at 1 frame per second. But in north america and europe where the working week is 60 hours a week, the father (or mother) can actually watch the child and maybe offer a helping hand. Instead of admire a pixelated version.
Perhaps this phenemonon can explain the adoption gap. If we have more time to spend with the ones we love, we don't need to purchase technological replacements for this contact.
Just a thought.
To forestall any comments (Score:3, Insightful)
However, there are significant reasons to believe the claim is true in this case. For instance, consider electric fields. You may not be aware of this or have thought of it this way, but a microwave oven is basically just a big, unmodulated radio station broadcasting in the microwave band instead of the radio band. And what do we use microwave ovens for? Cooking things.
And microwaves, like all electromagnetic radiation, are caused by what? Electric fields. And a major source of electric fields and broadcast power is what? Cell phones. And we put cell phones where? Next to our genitals and next to our brains[1].
So, while I love my personal computer, SUV, air-conditioning and other marvels of modern life I Just Say No to cancer-causing cell phones.
[1] For me this is two separate locations, YMMV
Five rules to successfully owning a cellphone (Score:5, Insightful)
This is stupid.
Also, the US has a large culture of pager use that just hasn't taken off anywhere else in the world. We have cellphones with SMS capability to do the same thing. Forget combining the two products - they're already combined.
There are five stages to owning a mobile phone: This presumes you've got one to make use of it, not to just so you can say you have one.
1: Buy the phone. Many people think this is the only thing they have to do. It's not.
2: Carry the damned thing with you everywhere. Most fall over at this point because they do things like only carry the phone to work or whatever - if it's not with you AT ALL TIMES then people won't get used to reaching you on it. This stage is tricky because you carry it everywhere even when it doesn't ring, and it won't for ages until:
3: Don't be afraid to give out your number to everyone. EVERYONE. Once you've done this you'll actually start receiving calls - it's only at this point you'll be seeing the benefit of having the phone.
4: Don't be afraid to MAKE calls on your phone. The more you use it the more you'll be contacted on your phone.
The rest of the world (Score:4, Insightful)
And the "large country" argument doesn't hold water. Mobile telephony in Australia is a generation ahead of the US, and we're about the same land mass with one fifteenth the population. Ok, coverage ain't great in the middle, but you can make a phone call in Melbourne, and hold the same connection while you drive 4000km to Cape York.
I once stood on the ancient Greek island of Delos which was once the centre of the known universe, and received a mobile phone call from someone back home in Oz who'd just dialed my regular number. Awesome.
Re:Five rules to successfully owning a cellphone (Score:2, Insightful)
1) Cost - If calls are cheap enough, then more and more people will have phones.
2) Availability - If it's cheap enough, more people would have cellphones with them then I might need one too (domino effect)
3) Cheaper data services, more flexable service plans etc. might help too.
how expensive is home Internet? (Score:3, Insightful)
Umm, except that in most countries people get online and access "data services" through the telephone network. If it is prohibitively expensive to access the Internet from home, due to setup and/or per-minute/per-month charges, it makes sense that people spend more time sending e-mail and accessing information from their phones rather than from home PCs. I don't know if this is the case, but I would like to have seen it addressed in the article.
I know at $700 I would not be ready to add a second phone line for the Net and I don't know how far along the broadband rollout is over there.
Re:There's a reason for all of this... (Score:2, Insightful)
There are other reasons not mentioned (Score:5, Insightful)
The biggest reason why cellphones have not taken off in the US in comparison to Europe, at least, is simply price -- or in particular the *way* they are priced.
In Germany (and, I believe, in most other European countries), cellphones are charged exactly the same way a fixed-line phone is charged. You pay a basic monthly fee, and you pay per second or 10 seconds for calls you make. There are no "airtime" fees or other gotchas. The rates are also easy to understand, more or less -- for a call within your provider's network, you pay a "local" call; calls within your country are "long-distance"; and calls outside of your country are international. Quite rational.
My provider also has the added perk that I can choose either five fixed-line numbers or one area code to get discounted calls. So if I choose Berlin's area code -- 030 -- I can call anyone in Berlin for a much lower rate.
In comparison, my family in the States has a blizzard of confusing fee schedules, with plenty of "gotchas" built-in.
Another problem is the lack of standards across the States. Europe has the GSM standard, and your phone will work across nearly all of Europe. The USA has no such common standard, and even if you're smart enough to get a dual-band or tri-band cellphone, you get hammered on the roaming charges in the States.
I'm actually not that much of a fan of cellphones-as-portals, though -- WAP seems such an abortion of an idea and so far navigating the Web with a keypad is just a non-starter (and, like the article says, Americans tend to drive and not take public transport, so they have less time to fiddle with the things). But it is often a nice option to have. I use it to check what movies are playing (and to reserve tix), check train times (OK, that's not too useful in the States ;-P ) and sometimes to check the news, but that's about it -- I would never buy anything with it, because the technology is so far rather insecure.
i-Mode was also recently introduced in Germany by my provider (they licensed the technology from NTT-DoCoMo), so Europe is close to Japan's level now, though it remains to be seen if i-Mode and other 2.5G technologies take off in Europe (let alone 3G).
GPRS and HSCSD are also well-established, so I can go online at 56K digital with my Nokia and Powerbook via infrared and OS X (haven't gotten it to work with Linux, tho). GPRS is *very* expensive, though -- 2.5 Eurocents per 1K of data -- but HSCSD is fairly reasonable (why the difference, I don't know -- both give you the same speed AFAIK).
Cheers,
Ethelred [grantham.de]
Simple (Score:3, Insightful)
Having someone around who actually knows how to build something is important to the empire-building, plant-watering donut list and their bonuses.
Japan in particular probably has a much better developed sense of loyalty and business ethics as well. Of course, the suits will disagree, but when was the last $4 billion "accounting error" in Japan?
Not This Boring "Story" Again (Score:2, Insightful)
Why do seemingly well-intentioned and intelligent people assume that distinct and different cultures should enjoy a technological homogoneity?
Is it that difficult to understand that not everything that works for Americans works for Japanese or Europeans? There are many factors that determine which technologies thrive in different countries. This article both acknowledges these difrerences and at the same time dismisses them. Why? Probably because a rationale article doesn't pay the bills for a freelance writer compared to a doom and gloom article.
The Japanese like their cellphones? Good for them. I like my broadband connection.
Data point... (Score:3, Insightful)
The demos were given at 120k bps over a cell phone that flipped open and plugged into a pcmcia slot in our laptop.
That freakin' rocked. We (USA) didn't have anything even close.
Re:There's a reason for all of this... (Score:5, Insightful)
The United States has a very, very, very large land mass compared to Japan or Finland, or any other country in Europe that has cooler cell phone technology than we do.
IMHO that's not the issue. First of all, Finland has a population of roughly five million with a density of about 17 people per square kilometer.
Why's that important? Because if these services can be rolled out (profitably) in Finland, then the following technique could be used in the US:
1. Define one single national standard.
2. Try it out in one city that has an insane population density.
3. If it's profitable, start expanding to other places based on the already defined national standard. Each and every company could compete using the same standard.
Instead, this is what I think has happened:
1. Company A decides to implement a standard of its own for voice calls. Company B does the same.
2. Very few people buy phones because of major interoperability issues. (This is not the case in Finland, to continue using it as an example. A Finnish GSM phone will work anywhere in Europe, and around most of the world. Virtually everyone has one.)
3. Because of the slow growth, a mobile phone culture hasn't yet formed in the U.S, slowing down the growth even more. Thus operators have less resources to implement new features, and even if they did they'd probably be proprietary, worsening the already bad situation.
What we need is a worldwide standard that everyone would adhere to. What we have now is a bunch of companies trying to out-Microsoft each other. And yes, I do realize that's easier said than done, but it should at least be given some thought.
your numbers (Score:3, Insightful)
Finland: 16.9
Sweden: 21.6
Japan: 415.0
US: 30.4
Of course, as you say, the density of major urban areas is in many ways more important than overall density. But it's still worth noting the difference in Japan -- I'd count a 13.7x difference as significant enough to have an effect.
How much do they pay TOTAL? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:There's a reason for all of this... (Score:3, Insightful)
This is not a problem. Similar problems were experienced in Poland about 8 years ago when GSM networks were deployed. Standard procedure was to first cover the most populated and rich areas - this would be Bay Area and New York. DCS (GSM 1800) system is used - it needs more base stations but has more network capability. Then after generating some revenue, suburban areas are covered using GSM 900 (less base stations needed). The phones are compatible with both frequencies. Rinse, lather, repeat. Area is not a problem.
Also, you don't roll out a service then wait for the people to come. You advertise it. It works in much poorer countries like Poland. Cell phones are big here.So why won;t USians want to use cell phones? I have no idea.
I consider my cell phone one of my basic tools. I talk to people with it. My servers report status via SMSes so I know if they are OK. I can pay for things with it (with cooperation of my bank and my GSM provider).Not to mention Internet access for use with my notebook and Palm. And it is not a bleeding edge phone - it was when it was new (it is a US design - Motorola), but now it lacks Bluetooth, multimedia messaging and some cool customization options. It isn;t expensive. It works everywhere in the world, even in some areas of US, where GSM 1900 is avaliable. Since it is private, I can switch it off when I'm not at work, so my employer can;t reach me everywhere. Since I can switch caller ID on and off, it won't advertise my pnone number when I don;t want to. I can't imagine living without one. Why americans don't want to use them is a mystery to me.
Re:Sigh (Score:1, Insightful)
One rule to keep your sanity (Score:3, Insightful)
Yeah, see the thing is, I don't want to be reached all the time. Right now, there is no reason any one would need to contact me urgently. Whatever it is, it can wait. If it's that much of an emergency that you have to get in touch with me, maybe you should call 911 first.
Thats why my cell phone sits in a drawer, and is only pulled out and activated when I move someplace where I can't get a land line. (I'm a college student, the moving every 9/3 months thing is getting old fast...)
I understand that there are certain careers where you do need to be in touch all the time, but if I'm not in one, the cell phone stays in the drawer.
Better reason for this: cheap landline costs (Score:5, Insightful)
I think the biggest reason why the USA hasn't really adopted cellular phones on a scale like they do in Japan and Europe is the fact the USA has probably the cheapest landline telephone costs in the world.
Remember, in the USA for the most part local calls up to 10-12 miles from where you call are not billed by the minute. This is why Internet access took off in the USA using landline voice telephone connections. Also, long distance calls within the USA are really cheap, too; the various 10-10 service allow you to call anywhere in the USA for under US$0.10 per minute 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
Because landline telephone calls in Japan and Europe are billed by the minute even for local calls, when cellular systems were introduced there the pricing structure between cellular and landline phone service was not that much different, so people in Japan and Europe took to cellphones very quickly.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
things are different here (Score:3, Insightful)
Also smaller cell sizes, as present in Japan, makes phones smaller because they don't need to output as much power thus requiring a smaller battery.
However looking back, it sure would be nice if we had a single unified digital standard like the Europeans, but does that really inhibit people here?? If I have a TDMA phone, that doesn't stop me from calling my buddy who has a GSM phone?
2) We already have an efficient land-based voice&data infrastructure that is cheap and omnipresent. Everybody, I mean everybody including your grandparents, already has land-based voice service. This isn't the case in other countries where land-based service is costly or unavailable.
3) We have the space, and the money, for computers in our households. Why surf the internet on a 2" screen when you have that Gateway sitting in your living room at home?
4) A multitude of other socio-economic/cultural reasons that are on the tip of my tongue but I don't feel like delving into. For example, I did away with my cellphone because I would rather spend my money on DSL at home. Even if my cellphone had the nifty Japanese features, I still would choose my PC at home with DSL. Some may not agree with me, but I believe that many do. If I had a little more money to spend, a cellphone with basic voice service would suffice.
Re:i would have to agree with you... (Score:2, Insightful)
JOhn
Re:The rest of the world (Score:4, Insightful)
There are certain areas where government regulation to protect corporations from their own short-sighted stupidity and the public from the consequences is a very good idea.
EU regulation forced the national (later private) carriers to standardize on ONE cell phone technology.
As a result, there is effectively one cellular network in EU that the different carriers build towers for, and as a result, an EU mobile user can get dial tone practically anywhere. SMS works everywhere. An EU user who wants to change carriers can do so by swapping the SIM card. EU users don't have to pay for incoming calls.
Meaning that just about everyone has a mobile in the more advanced parts of EU, and the same phone that works in Holland works fine in Spain. I have a close friend in Holland. I take it for granted my SMS messages will get to her no matter where in the EU she goes.
"Let the market decide" has put the US a generation behind the rest of the world for mobile services. The major RBOCs got exactly what they paid for, and not only did the public get screwed, but they are not profiting off cell phones the public can't be bothered to buy. Isn't it wonderful having the best elected officials money can buy?
Re:There's a reason for all of this... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:There's a reason for all of this... (Score:2, Insightful)
Key to Japanese cellphone usage is innovation (Score:2, Insightful)
1) Don't underestimate the value of good quality, large, color screens on a phone. It makes *everything* much easier: using the built-in phone book, navigating menus, etc. Try a mapping application on a screen with 4 lines of b&w text.
2) The Japanese phones are generally more *fun* to use. Screensavers, games, ring tones, etc. add a lot more variety, innovation, and tend to drive handset upgrades.
3) They work better for voice calls. The sound quality is better. The batteries seem to last forever.
4) The revenue sharing model means that there are more content providers, this leads to competition among them, hence better services.
5) Close collaboration between the operators and the handset manufacturers has led to standardisation of things like batteries, cables and headsets, which makes life easier for users, and also promotes upgrades - after all, you can keep using your old accessories.
6) Operators are willing to take ownership of the correct functioning of the entire service - they will help configure your PC (in fact, some have dedicated ports for mobile phone connection), troubleshoot the correct functioning of services, etc.
I would have to agree with the main premise of the article, which is that lack of innovation by the operators has forced them in to the trap of bulk selling minutes at ever-lower prices. I find the quality of the basic service superior in Japan, and the supplementary services are actually useful.
Re:There's a reason for all of this... (Score:3, Insightful)
The FCC decided, on digital cellular technology, to not specify a single standard, but rather allow companies to choose whatever standard they wanted - as long as it met spectral efficiency and a few other requirements.
This had two effects - one greatly detrimental to the US, and one of great benefit to the rest of the world:
First, the phone companies adopted several standards... three modulation standards (TDMA, CDMA and GSM) on two bands. Thus phones purchased for one company are rarely useful with a competitor's system. So, if you switch providers, you have to buy another phone. The phone companies take advantage of this to reduce churning (people buying the service, and then dropping off shortly afterwards). In fact, they are so vicious about it at this point that many will not even allow *compatible* phones if you first bought it through a competitor. More about that later...
Second, the freedom to innovate meant that the technically superior CDMA standard was given a chance. Without the deregulation, TDMA would have been chosen as the standard (as it was for GSM - although not a compatible TDMA). With deregulation some companies (typically the old land-line companies) went with TDMA, and others with CDMA. CDMA has shown what its inventor (the president of Qualcomm) claimed: it provides a higher spectral density than TDMA - more phones per megaHerz per square kilometer. As a result, future standards are all based on CDMA. This is a benefit to the whole world....except that in the US we will still have a whole bunch of non-interoperable standards.
The large number of standards is the problem. It reduces consumer incentive to buy fancy phones, because they cannot take them with them if they change providers. It reduces manufacturer incentive because the market is split across a whole bunch of different standards, so the production runs are smaller. In addition, the companies may never develop adequate interoperability on the backbone level for data and messages... thus instant messaging may only work if the person you are messaging is with the same vendor. In other words, the US phone system is developed as if the lessons of the internet never happened (standards, interoperability)!!
One gratuitous comment...
I had a CDMA phone from Sprint. I changed service to Qwest, which has a technically compatible system. But Qwest was unable to use the phone, because Sprint refused my request to provide the programming unlock code for my phone. Not having time to get into hax0ring it, I bought another phone.
How GSM beat the Euro telemonopolies (Score:2, Insightful)
How did GSM beat the monopoly? Simple, the rule was that any phone line crossing a public street violated the monopoly. Cell towers circumvented this problem.
Price wars between mobile carriers got prices to an acceptable level.
Re:There's a reason for all of this... (Score:3, Insightful)
The real reason is the pricing of cellphones compared to land lines. When you are going to be charged for an incoming call there is absoultely no incentive for anyone to buy a phone so people can keep in touch with them. One day a provider in the US is going to figure this out and make a lot of money as half the population switches.
Why are these articles all the same? (Score:3, Insightful)
I really cannot understand why these articles keep popping up saying, "Why are cell phones so popular in Japan and Europe when they are not in the US?"
The reason I am so sick of this is that the reasons are basically obvious to anybody that does not have a business degree. There are two main categories for this problem: Greed and marketing stupidity. And these problems are also pervasive in the US broadband market.
The first problem, greed, should be obvious to any customer or individual who has even inquired about cellphones at any store. Every company has their own proprietary cell phones and will not allow customers to use their service without buying a new phone. This was covered in this slashdot article [slashdot.org].
This practice essentially creates a monopoly where the customer must deal with a large expense to switch service providers. Companies might think this is good for business because it protects their customer base, but it, in fact, harms their business because people do not like to commit like that. In this case, the cellphone becomes disposable, and who is going to shell out 300+ bucks for a disposable phone?
The other aspect to this greed was pointed out by Linus himself in his book Just for Fun . He said the fact that all of the service providers had proprietary systems instead of agreeing on a standard, like GSM, caused the market to be stagnant. I agree with this point. In addition to the fact that it would alleviate the problem stated above, it would also have avoided a lot of the other problems encountered by the cell phone industry. The biggest of these problems was the problem of building cell towers. Without a common standard, the companies all had to build their own system of cell towers, so the service varied greatly from place to place. Service was bad, so customers were annoyed.
In a common system where companies would be using compatable equipment, they could just pay eachother for bandwidth usage and compete on price and service. However, they wanted to spend all that extra money to attempt to create monopolies. I really do not see the point of having a monopoly over a small number of customers, though.
The other aspect was stupid marketing. This article talks about what American consumers are doing in their cars. It says that they might want a wireless app to give them a traffic report. This is typical of the marketing decision that was made by some brainiac way back in the early days. Some genius thought that the people who would use cellphones the most would be businessmen. The cellphone industry should find and castrate this guy. He has not only made cellphones bad for business but for the consumer as well.
Why was this guy stupid? Because businessmen know how much work they do for their dollar. They are not going to spend one more second on the phone than is necessary. They also do not care about aesthetics (unless they are in sales, but even then, most business men have notoriously bad taste, and it is often quite entertaining to watch yuppies feign artistic appreciation). Therefore, businessmen are not going to use their cellphones excessively, and neither are they going to pay top dollar for the prettiest phone on the market.
Who is going use their phones a lot and pay for the most expensive ones, then? The article [nwsource.com] has a clue. It says:
The author (obviously someone who has been in the business world too long) talks about "a phenomenon driven by teenage girls." This is not phenomenon. Think back to when you were a teenager and dating. How many times did you get into a serious fight with a sibling over phone usage? How many times did you get into a fight with your parents restrictions on the phone? How many times did you stay up most or all of the night whispering into the phone so that your parents would not hear?Teenagers are the key to cellphone market. They always have been. Teenagers will talk until the battery dies. Teenages will carry an extra battery. Teenagers will buy extra accessories for their phones. Teenagers will use their phones as status symbols to their friends.
But who pays for these cell phones? Well, the parents, of course. The parents will buy cellphones for their teenagers because they want their kid to be safe. They will want to check up on the kid now and then.
Now, we have a responsible group (the parents: those businessmen whose money everyone wanted) funding the excesses of an irresposible group (the teenagers who have a hormonal imperative to generate big bills). A phenomenon? I think not.
As obvious as this may sound, it did not occur to the author of the article [nwsource.com] or the businessmen she interviewed. Cell phones have always been ugly in the US. I will not buy Motorola products because they always released ugly products to the US market (although their cellphones are quite pretty in Asia). I think this attitude that Americans have no aesthetic taste is quite insulting.
In any case, I am sick of this whining about the consequences of stupid business decisions. It sounds like GM in the late 70's blaming Japan because American consumers did not want the big cars that GM could make greater profits on. Did any of these people read Adam Smith? The market cannot be forced to accept a product (unless of course you are Microsoft).