Fanboy
It was straight to business on my first full day in Tokyo; right after breakfast Q-Taro met up with me in the lobby of my hotel and we headed for Tokyo Big Sight and the Wireless Japan Expo.
Despite being open to the public it wasn’t really a consumer show. In fact, it was actually a little underwhelming, with the biggest crowds at the DoCoMo where the company was showing off their “new” BlackBerry. I choice instead to document the entire family of the company’s spokesfungi:
What made the rest of the event worthwhile for me was having a resident keitai expert at my side, showing me how Japanese mobile users can watch broadcast television on their handsets for free using 1seg, and quite frankly blowing my mind just a bit with two other facts about the wireless industry here that I didn’t know, including:
- Just like back home in Toronto, you can’t actually get a signal in most trains here (when it’s underground, that is). The reason why you see everyone hammering away on their keypads is likely because they’re drafting a message to send to their friends when they get off at their stop to meet them.
- Smartphones aren’t actually popular in Japan! Even with on-board TV tuners, QR Code readers and mobile wallets, most Japanese keitai are still considered lowly feature phones.
Q-Taro also relayed to me the story of the iPhone launch in Tokyo. He waited in line outside the SoftBank store in Harajuku for some sixteen hours for his, but only because employees guaranteed that the first 1200 people in line would get one, and sent everyone else home.
And the way SoftBank gets around the $199/$299 worldwide price tag mandated by Apple? There’s no contract per se, but customers pay the full, unsubsidized cost for their iPhones (around $800 CAD for the 8 GB model) then get a monthly rebate on their bill that works out to the difference over three years of service.
I got an interesting demo of the iPhone’s unique for-Japan-only solution to predictive text, but after a day of swapping our mobiles back and forth I think Q-Taro was warming up to my Nokia E61i more than me to his iPhone — I’m sure he’ll deny it, though. 
2 Comments
Hi! I live and work in Tokyo. Wanted to comment about subway mobile phone reception. There is reception underground at most station platforms,walkways and underground shopping areas. Between the subway stations (tunnels) there is usually no reception. The people you see typing away are usually composing a email and waiting for the next stop to send it or making a draft for later.In my humble opinion the mobile reception in Japan is much more comprehensive and strong that in the states. Except for 2G J-phone/Vodafone/Softbank users, its really good.
That’s exactly what I meant about underground reception, but also pretty much exactly what I said about users composing mail onboard trains… Wasn’t it?