Juggernaut of digitaria rolls on, though some people hardly notice the cacophony and turmoil it has caused human society.

This merciless vehicle runs really powerful in Japan, crushing every phenomenon under it, and leaving spent... not exactly, still perfectly usable gears and systems behind. Only sentimental memories linger on.

NTT DoCoMo announced on May 25 that it would stop selling 2G mova terminals by end of next year. I guess some readers are not very familiar with this funny naming. The DoCoMo mova phones revolutionalized the stale mobile phone sphere by introducing several new features at a time. Though its communication speed was paltry 9.6Kbps, its IP packet transfer mode transformed the whole scene. Yes, it was the starting point of i-mode, the base of full Internet access and applications for mobile phones.

Mova terminals, loved by and addicted generations of Japanese, will go to digital oblivion soon. Don't worry, i-mode stays on strong for some more time.

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Some stunning stunts are required to prevail on the oversaturated mobile market in Japan. When summer bonus is due to flood the wallet of salarymen around June/July, all the mobile phone operators try desperately to outmaneuver the competition.

A seemingly impressive service like One Seg (terrestrial digital TV broadcasting for mobile terminals) is loved by users very much, and is quickly becoming a standard feature for the mobile phone in Japan. But One Seg gives a big headache for the operators actually. Because it does not contribute at all to increasing the ever-shrinking ARPU (Average Revenue per User). Or worse, it deprives precious time for Net surfing or voice chatting from mobile users!

Another fashionable function, Osaifu K-tai (mobile wallet service), also gives a big dilemma to mobile carriers. The contactless chip of Osaifu K-tai does not use up 3G packets at all, let alone voice communication. No ARPU increase again. If the mobile operator had handled the financial and transaction side, the big money would definitely have rolled in. But, usually, this part stays firmly in the exclusive hands of financial joints.
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Japanese computer users love smaller thing. People compare their computers and boast around loudly how small they are.

"What, your laptop is so gigantic, it can sit comfortably only on the laps of African elephants. What a hopeless Luddite you are!"

"Oh, c'mon, yours is not an Escherichia coli size, either. Actually, you need a backhoe to open the clamshell lid, don't you? My ultraportable can slip into the hip pocket of my pet cockroach easily!"

Legendary IBM PC110 "Ultraman". The first-ever Windows ultralight.

Sony VAIO-type U VGN-U50. A neat machine, but did not sell well.

IBM Japan used to be the highest guru in the field of tiny computer market. Nobody has beaten the world record of IBM Ultraman computer yet. Since IBM Japan's kinky gadget R&D division was bought up by Chinese Lenovo, it would not be likely that IBM will break its own record again.

So, the niche market of ultralights has gone to Sony.
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The idea of paperlike display, electronically erasable and writable, has been around so many years. Quite a few commercial attemps have been made, none of them very successful so far. The most recent failure case was Sony's electronic bookreader, which failed miserably worldwide.

None daunted, Hitachi jumped in bravely this time.

Hitachi Albiray display. You wanna pay a fortune for this pseudo-paper?

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3G W-CDMA (Wideband Code-Devision Multiple Access) has grown into the dominant service in Japan. Both NTT DoCoMo and Vodaphone support the 384kbps speed, upstream and downstream. Almost half of DoCoMo users (around 25 million of them) are brandishing their 3G FOMA terminals. The second runner, KDDI/au, operates another 3G system, CDMA2000 1X, and has achieved the 3G ratio of impressive an 97 percent. Only 3 percent of KDDI users remain Luddites.

Some users complain bitterly about the 3G speed of 384kbps, saying FOMA is going slower than a lazy slug. You know, Japanese customers are extremely hard to please. Therefore, NTT DoCoMo complied and declared the introduction of a 3G extension service HSDPA (High Speed Downlink Packet Access), starting in 2006 summer season.
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