Asia hints at mobile tech’s future

If you want a glimpse of what you’ll be doing with your cell phone in two or three years, you don’t need a time machine. You simply need to travel to Japan or South Korea.For years, those two countries have been the world leaders in cell phone technology adoption, with enthusiastic consumers who are willing to try new services as well as mobile operators that exert significant influence in the market to make sure new services can accommodate large-scale demand.

As a result, many of the trends that we in the United States see as “coming soon” are already being used by millions of consumers in Japan and South Korea. Japan, for example, is way ahead of the rest of the world in its use of near-field communication technology, or NFC, which allows you to swipe your phone near a sensor to make payments for products and services.

Most handsets sold by NTT DoCoMo, the largest cell phone operator in Japan, already sport integrated NFC chips. Commuters using public transportation wave their phones in front of an NFC sensor at commuter stops instead of buying a physical ticket. The technology is also used at convenience stores, restaurants, and even in taxis. And in the bustling train stations of Tokyo, NFC technology is used to allow commuters to pay for and unlock lockers without inserting coins.

“Seamless instant payment instead of fishing around for change as you leave a taxi is a nice detail that contributes to urban convenience,” said Douglas Krone, CEO of Dynamism, an importer of cool gadgets, including laptops and cell phones, from Japan.

But that’s not all. QR codes–or “quick response” two-dimensional bar codes–are also widely used in Japan to wirelessly transfer information that might otherwise be manually entered into a phone. A QR code also can automatically launch a Web page. Cell phone users simply take a picture of the code, which can be printed on business cards or in print advertisements, with their phones, and the information stored in the QR bar code can either be automatically imported to the phone or used to launch a Web page or send an e-mail.

Broadcast mobile TV, which is expected to be a huge new application in the U.S., has already been offered in Japan and South Korea for more than a year. Today, close to 6 million people in those countries are watching TV on tiny cell phone screens.

In South Korea, mobile operators have been delivering broadcast mobile TV using a standard called terrestrial-digital multimedia broadcast (T-DMB), a technology that has little appeal in other parts of the world. In Europe, operators such as Telecom Italia and Vodafone are using services based on a competing standard, called DVB-H, to deliver mobile TV. U.S. operators Verizon Wireless and AT&T have signed deals to use chipmaker Qualcomm’s MediaFlo network, which is based on proprietary broadcast technology.

The handset as PC and gaming device
Japan and South Korea also offer the most advanced handsets in the market. Japan’s NTT DoCoMo recently said it will offer a new gaming phone that uses motion-sensing technology similar to that found in Nintendo’s Wii game console. The new product, due out this month, is the result of collaboration among tech heavyweights Mitsubishi Electric, Matsushita Electric Industrial (Panasonic), and Sharp.

The pervasiveness of cell phones in Japanese and South Korean cultures has also spawned related products and services. Because people depend on cell phones for so much, a dead battery can completely isolate a customer. As a result, convenience stores in Japan offer mobile-phone power options such as quick-charge stations or supplemental battery add-ons that will carry the user through the day.

While Japan and South Korea could offer insight as to the types of applications that may eventually come to market in the U.S., experts say it’s no guarantee that every application or phone that is hot in these markets will find a following in the U.S.

“There are a number of social differences between the Japanese or South Korean consumer and a consumer from the U.S.,” said Charles Golvin, an analyst with Forrester Research. “For one, people in Japan spend a lot more time on public transportation than Americans do. Sitting on the train for two hours every day commuting to and from work provides a lot of time to consume media on your phone.”

Beyond the cultural differences, Golvin notes, operators in Japan and South Korea also took a very different approach to adding new content to their upgraded 3G networks. In these markets, operators have allowed third-party Internet developers and other content creators to develop content for their mobile subscribers. By contrast, U.S. operators have kept their networks closed, restricting what content users can access.

“NTT DoCoMo’s approach was to let a thousand flowers bloom,” Golvin said. “They were happy just to get revenue from the usage of their network, and they allowed subscribers to dictate which services they wanted to use. But in the U.S., it’s a very top-down market, which limits the types of applications that consumers will be able to try.”