Mobile business in Japan: the future of smart phone users
Japan (and maybe Korea) is the leading high tech mobile countries on this planet. Different from other countries, in Japan the mobile phone, not the PC, is the device of choice for internet access. Now Over 80 million users access the internet through their mobile phones.
High Tech Mobile Workers
Millions of businessmen are equipped with high end mobile phones other countries could only dream about: Phones offer screen sizes of up to 800×480 pixel, some eve have integrated hard disks, document viewer software and OCR business card scanners. Connection speeds range from 250 Kbits up to 5 Mbit and many of the users are on a flatrate mobile data plan.
Old School Business
But when looking at the “business communication usage” of these mobile phones, over 70% only use them for making business calls. Only 8-10% use the mobile phone for checking or writing business related mails. More advanced functions like reading business documents on a mobile device (even it is possible) is something only a few tech geeks or web2.0 managers make use of.
The Non-PDA country
Mobile business devices like PDA’s never took off in Japan. This is also due to the fact that many phones were already capable of doing most of the things a PDA could do but also due to the fact that many simply do not want to spend their free “off-site” time dealing with business matters.
The chill-out digital nomad
Unlike their counterparts in the US or Europe, the typical Japanese businessman does not spend his out-of-office time on accessing company mail or working on a digital document or presentation. Instead they use this time to “chill-out” trying to escape the hectic business life by reading, sleeping or playing games. Here Japanese use their mobile phone for writing private mails, reading about the latest news, listening to mobile music or playing mobile games.
The smartphone age
In 2006 Japan saw a new category of mobile phones:”smartphones”. While other countries already had smartphones in their markets for quite a while, Japan was a “late adopter”. Even the range of available devices increased month by month, selling a smartphones to Japanese consumers turned out to be a challenge:
The fruitless Blackberry
RIM together with DoCoMo introduced their Blackberry service and device in 2006. Unlike the rest of the world Japanese users did not care much about what the device had to offer. Up until today the main clients for Blackberry in Japan are foreigners or foreign companies. It needs to be seen if the service will also be able to win the hearts of Japanese businessmen.
For many Japanese owning a smartphone also includes the pressure to devote more of their “off-time” to business matters. (apart from making phone calls). This is especially true for the generation over 35. So selling smartphones to this age group will be a difficult task to handle. But there is a target group who might happily embrace the new business mobility:
The NewBiz
Young Japanese businessmen represent a new breed of digital nomads: Different from their older colleagues they are eager to devote their free time to digital business communication. They spent their student life with services like Gmail, Mixi, iCal and Navitime. They would rather look up a company on Google and find out about their reputation on GREE rather than checking the newspaper or consulting an older colleague. Being able to communicate and access information at any given time is a key part of their daily business. There is a chance that they will embrace the recent smartphone boom and make room for a new work style: the new digital nomad, “un-chilled”!
What needs to be seen is how this will change the typical Japanese off-site working style in the next 3-4 years and also how it will affect the usage patterns of mobile devices. If Japanese salarymen will trade in their mobile entertainment for mobile business needs to be seen.
