KEY POINTS:
The "wallet phone" is one of the innovations Japan hopes will help it succeed with an aggressive push to market its mobile technology overseas.
Although Japan boasts some of the most sophisticated cellphones in the world, delivering high-speed internet connections, digital TV broadcasts and video downloads, the nation has failed to make its handsets, wireless technology and mobile services hits outside of Japan.
The latest initiative, spearheaded by the Government with an industry group of Japanese carriers and manufacturers, is an effort to help Japan catch up in wooing global users, said Masayuki Ito, official at the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications.
The wallet phone uses a tiny computer chip called FeliCa, embedded in each cellphone, which communicates with a reader device at stores, train stations and vending machines for cashless payments.
Such technology is more common in smart cards, popular in Singapore and parts of Europe. But Japan hopes to market the technology abroad for cellphones.
In Japan, wallet phones have been available since 2004, introduced by top mobile carrier NTT DoCoMo.
The wallet phones have been hits in Japan because of the omnipresent convenience stores and vending machines, as well as the relative lack of credit card use.
Older Japanese technology had compatibility problems with other global standards, but third-generation technology allows new products to be used outside the country, and can be more easily adapted to overseas products.
Japan leads the rest of the world in 3G cell phone proliferation, with nearly 104 million 3G handsets in use, or about 90 per cent of cell phones being used in Japan.
- AP
