Mobile Behavior: an Omnicom Group Company

Americans are becoming increasingly fascinated by the quirky culture of Japan, especially their mobile technology. It runs so deep, that "digital" and "online" are synonymous with "mobile." Why is this? And can we expect it in the U.S.? Our colleague Lucy King in Tokyo helped shed some light with a look at the state of mobile and what's coming up in Japan. Here's a look:

In Japan, the driving force of digital market growth has shifted from PCs to mobile phones. Japan is a highly mature market for mobile phones, and users will exceed 100 million this year. In fact, more Japanese access the Internet through mobile phone than PC (same in China, Korea, APAC region). Japan has the world's 2nd largest economy, and the 10th largest population, so what they do or don't online has a real impact on markets around the globe. Fortunately they are doing a lot.

The Japanese are voracious mobile consumers. There is constant demand for new gadgets, features, designs and convenience functions. Some top trends:

• E-Commerce: Rakuten owns the largest online shopping mall in Japan with over 18 million products from 18,000 merchants (and its very own baseball team!). Online auction sites are a frequent destination for Japanese Internet users.
• E-wallets (swipe at ticket gates, convenience stores... essentially point, click, buy)
• Scanners to decode 2D barcodes, which appear frequently in advertisements and magazines.
• GPS tracking functions (children and dogs etc), guide maps etc.
• Killer content
• Email
• Music distribution
• Mobile novels (a growing niche market)
• Mobile Games
• Broadcast TV and UGC Video (Youtube's second largest market in Japan, and Sony, sensing the opportunity, launched a competitive last year called EyeVio)
• Pet interface (allows video chat and remote feeding)
• Blog updating

In terms of handsets, "small and cute" rules. Simultaneously, buzz is moving beyond regular cell phones and towards more comprehensive devices such as Smartphones (Windows Mobile). The challenge will obviously be formatting these traditionally bulkier devices for the market-and promoting them well. Right now, you'll see a lot of ads with both beautiful people promoting phones and "real" people using them.

You'll also hear talk about choices, choices and more choices. Given that there are just couple dominant carriers in Japan, this seems to be a sensitive area. In fact, a young Japanese ad exec recently told me that he envied the freedom we get with the iPhone App Store. The grass is always greener...

Tomorrow we'll post Part 2: Japanese Keitai Culture and What's Next...