It's wrong.
A lot of what people outside Japan write about Japan is wrong.
Actually, in "IEEE Spectrum" there was recently an article about
how wrong information becomes "common knowledge" if it's printed
and then propagated by others without checking.
Gerhard
Steve Oldmeadow wrote:
> On 2 Nov 2003 at 0:51, Gerhard Fasol wrote:
>
>
>>Bill,
>>
>>where do you get this idea from that Japanese people were deprived
>>of the internet? Internet penetration and usage rates in Japan are
>>as high or even higher than in Europe. It's totally untrue that
>>in Japan there was no or little internet usage at the introduction
>>of i-mode. It's one of the fantasies circulating in Europe among
>>people who don't know much about Japan's realities.
>>
>
>
> I must admit I was always under the impression that at the time of i-mode's
> introduction Japan did not have a large web surfing population - I finally managed to
> track down where I got that impression.
>
> To quote an article by Frank Rose in Wired Sept. 2001 called Pocket Monster:
>
> page 128 "The accepted wisdom about i-mode is that it works in Japan because the
> Japanese are pushovers for cute little gadgets like cell phones, because their
> homes are too cramped for American-style desk-hog computers, because few of
> them know what the Internet is anyway, and because i-mode is a proprietary service
> that's designed specifically for Japanese users."
>
> and then at page 131 "It's impossible to know whether i-mode would have
> succeeded so dramatically if the Japanese had already been surfing the Web on
> home computers - but not many Europeans have home Internet access either, and
> they certainly didn't jump on the WAP wagon."
>
> Note that this is specifically referring to the period Feb. 1999 - Feb. 2000.
>
> Steve Oldmeadow
>
>
> This mail was sent to address fasol@eurotechnology.com
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>
>
>
--
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Gerhard Fasol, PhD Eurotechnology Japan K. K.
fasol_at_eurotechnology.com http://www.eurotechnology.com/
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Received on Tue Nov 4 05:50:40 2003