Swimming Iguanas, Funny Birds and Japanese Smartphones - Galapagos Syndrome?

Risa Tanzawa

Editors Note: Risa Tanzawa is InnoPath's Tokyo based Marcom.

Blue footed boobies, swimming iguanas and other weird things make the Galapagos Islands, a small chain of islands on the equator in the Pacific, their home. Due to the relative isolation of these islands, evolution has taken some strange turns, resulting in scary looking lizards that eat algae under water, birds with a fetish for blue feet and other weirdness. Some say that the mobile handset market in Japan is similar to the Galapagos Islands, stunning and unexpected diversity that has evolved in isolation from the rest of the world resulting in if not shock and awe for the visitor, then at least surprise.

While weird and wonderful in their home market, Japanese device makers have had trouble selling their phones abroad, largely due to this divergent evolution of the market where features considered a necessity in Japan are not seen elsewhere. This problem is called the Galapagos Syndrome.

That said, let’s take a look at some of the unique features of Japanese mobile phones.

QR Code (two-dimensional bar code)
While many phones technically can read QR Codes, the two-dimensional bar codes seen in many Japanese ads, this is a technology not widely used or understood in the US. You can almost think of it as mobile Cue Cat except that, at least in Japan, QR has caught on and is widely used. This helps overcome the not so fun task of multitap/T9 input of long URLs.

IrDA (Sekigaisen-Tsushin)
You see a young couple saying goodbye on the street. Then you notice they are pointing their phones at each other like they were taking tricorder readings. The tricorder must have some good news, because both smile and bow and go their separate ways. What you just saw was the exchange of contact info over IR. Infrared, being short range and line of sight, is good for the semisecure exchange of info like contacts. Because it is short range and line of sight, it can be secure without having all sorts of passwords get in the way and it is a lot easier to do than to manually input a long, complex email address by hand.

Osaifu-Keitai®
Osaifu-Keitai is trademark of NTT DoCoMo, meaning Wallet-Mobile Phone. This technology uses Sony's Mobile FeliCa ICs. "Osaifu-Keitai" uses NFC radio and provides electronic money, credit card, electronic ticket, membership card, airline ticket, and other functionality. At convenience stores, you only need to hold a phone over a machine at the casher to purchase anything if you have enough money on your phone, which saves time and is very convenient. More from docomo.

One-Seg (TV)
One-Seg is a mobile terrestrial digital audio/ video and data broadcasting service. One-Seg is free and in many cases is used to watch TV on the handset. 86% of handsets shipping in Japan ship with One-Seg.

Apps
Japanese featurephones have been application friendly for a while, a feature which in combination with the powerful hardware helps blur the lines between a Japanese featurephone and a traditional smartphone. Games, including 3D shooters and the like requiring hardware acceleration, are available, but beware, downloads and use can chew up a lot of data which is expensive unless you have an unlimited plan.

Animated Emoticons and Email Decoration (cHTML email)
Japan is big on the cult of kawaii, people old and young all love “cute” and cHTML email puts the cute into mobile mail with animated emoticons, graphics, backgrounds and the like. This is particularly popular with women and children. There are more and more cute pictures, so actually I enjoying receiving new ones from my friends. You can reuse emoticons and pictures you have received, making this a fun, social feature. This feature was said to be one of the barrier to entry into the Japan market for the iPhone, which did not support this feature. Here is KDDI's page on this feature in Japanese.

So, just like the Galapagos Islands, Japan is a small island country and mobile phones, like the blue footed boobie, have taken on unique forms and colors to better meet local requirements. Sadly this supreme adaptation to local conditions, while useful in the native environment, makes life harder once off the island.