Keying in the code to success

摘要

If every Japanese mobile phone subscriber moved to the UK, our population would more than double. Even in such a technology-aware country, it is astounding how rapidly mobile communication has been embraced. Japan has more mobile subscribers than any other country, with a significant 25 per cent already using 3G. This critical mass lets Japanese operators drive revenue from content delivery and new mobile services. Their problem has traditionally been deciding where to focus service delivery. Over the past few years, Location Based Services (LBS), those reliant on knowing a person's location to deliver an appropriate service, have been the focus of attention. Today Japanese mobile operator KDDI offers over 130 different LBSs while another, NTT DoCoMo, receives over half a million hits per day on its 'i-area' service.