The wireless scene is not only years ahead, but racing ahead, full bore. The world may never catch up. In the US, where an ongoing standards war has yet to fully play out, cellular services remain balkanized. In Japan, meanwhile, more than 7 million people already access the Web via tiny mobile devices. Hundreds of sites here cater to the small screen, and magazine stands are packed with the TV Guide wannabes of this young medium.
Japan is the test bed for the world's wireless future.
The gadget-crazy Japanese are themselves part of the reason for this. Nowhere else are device manufacturers as driven to miniaturize, innovate, and ply on the features by a consumption-minded public. Demographics is perhaps the most important animus behind Japan's unwired revolution. Certainly a big number, but dialup accounted for 92 percent of consumer online access in 1999, leaving a tiny 1 percent surfing via wireless. And despite the growth in high-speed cable, DSL, and satellite access, by 2002 about 80 percent of US surfers will still connect with a 56K dialup modem, IDC says.