Japanese mobile industry has been evolved like the Galapagos Islands, what is needed is diversity

I while ago, I wrote this post on my own japanese blog...

People say Japanese mobile industry has been developed like the Galapagos Islands. I agree.

From the historical perspective, Japan has developed its culture in an original way by disconnection with other countries. Japan is dislocated because of geographic conditions. In addition, Tokugawa government had its policy called, “Sakoku” which is exclusion of foreigners, isolationism, policy of noninvolvement in the affairs of other countries at Edo era. Without having relationships with other part of the world, Japan had developed our originality. In order to create something, it needs time not to be interrupted from external world. Japanese animation culture has been developed in a unique way under this circumstance.

Retrieved from Wikipedia on Aug.27, 2008: Sakoku (Japanese: 鎖国, literally "country in chains" or "lock up of country") was the foreign relations policy of Japan under which no foreigner could enter or Japanese could leave the country on penalty of death. The policy was enacted by the Tokugawa shogunate under Tokugawa Iemitsu through a number of edicts and policies from 1633-1639 and remained in effect until 1853 with the arrival of Commodore Matthew Perry and the opening of Japan. It was still illegal to leave Japan until the Meiji Restoration (1868).

Japanese mobile industry is also one of the other examples of Japanese originally developed culture. By competing with many handset manufactures, Japanese mobile industry has been developed and made a huge success in an original way. In another example, i-mode which is the first mobile Internet portal developed by NTT docomo contributed to enlarge mobile contents market in Japan. 

If we take a look at the world mobile industry, and the handset manufactures in particular, we have  four giants Nokia, Motorola, Samsung, and Sony Ericsson are holding 78% share of its market. 

What is important is people in Japan? There are users who care about features on mobile phones. There are also users who do not care about features as long as they can use email. It is no meaning to have features which users do not use, even if these features have been developed with huge effort. 

What is needed for diversifying modern society is to be the world which creates “the Galapagos Islands” for anybody."

2008-07-08 10:09