ABSTRACT
One country has rapidly adopted the wireless Internet like no other – Japan. In doing so, rightly or wrongly, Japan has become an exemplar market of the wireless Internet. While the United States has grappled with its fragmented set of mobile network and service standards and Europe has experienced slow adoption of the wireless Internet based on WAP, the diffusion of wireless data services in Japan has been phenomenal. As of 30 September 2002, Japan had just over 59 million users of the wireless Internet (Mobile Media Japan, 2002), from a cellular phone subscriber base of nearly 72 million. Internationally, Japan has the highest rate of Internet capability in mobile phones (82 per cent), followed by South Korea (59.1 per cent), and Finland (16.5 per cent) (Nua, 2002). The United States is ranked as sixth with 7.9 per cent. In Japan, the leading telecommunications provider, NTT DoCoMo, has approximately 59 per cent of all wireless Internet subscribers, using its popular iMode service.
