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WIRELESS `I-MAIL' CONNECTS IN JAPAN By Uli Schmetzer, Tribune Foreign Correspondent 6-7 minutes
TOKYO — If Japan's technology trends are any gauge of what the future might look like in the U.S., Americans may soon see teenagers wearing cordless phones as necklaces and using them to send e-mail without knowing how to type.
While Japan's young people are far less likely than American teens to use personal computers to surf the Web, millions of them are engaging in Web-like activities using a new generation of extremely portable clam-size cordless phones.
Called "keitai," these mobile phones offer music pumped in from cyberspace, thumb-generated e-mail, exchanges of electronic photos among friends and an array of other functions.
"I don't want to use computers because I'd have to learn to type," said Anzu Nishiwaki, an 18-year-old student in Tokyo. "But I receive 20 to 30 e-mails a day and send out as many on my keitai. To be honest, I can't imagine life without my keitai."
Only 14 percent of the Japanese population use the Internet versus 37 percent in the United States. But the gadget-groomed Japanese society quickly embraced wireless phones as an easily mobile substitute.
This month the number of wireless phone subscribers (60 million) surpassed fixed-line clients (58 million) in Japan. And every day 25,000 new mobile phone e-mail clients, mainly teenagers, join the throng.
Behind this rush is the novelty of a service catering to the particular needs of the Japanese: Phone-generated e-mail provides an alternative to personal computers, which most Japanese find costly and difficult to store in their limited living space.
To be computer literate, a Japanese person must learn two native alphabets, 3,000 Chinese ideograms and our Western alphabet, a tough prerequisite that discourages PC interest among many young Japanese.
Enter DoCoMo, the wireless phone subsidiary of Japan's telecom giant NTT Communications Corp.
"Our aim was to leapfrog over the computer generation to the phone for those members of the public who don't have or don't want to use computers," said Madoko Tsutsumi, a technician at NTT DoCoMo Inc.
Analysts say U.S. technology in wireless phone-generated mail is three years behind the Japanese, 18 months behind the Europeans. "The U.S. is the most far-behind wireless market in the world," said Steve Ballmer, Microsoft Corp. chief executive, during a visit to Japan earlier this year.
Interchangeably called "I-mode" or "I-mail" technology, the phone-generated mail craze has given birth to a new teenage culture and e-mail shorthand.
When Nishiwaki's 16-year-old sister, Sumomo, is sad, she sends out e-mail messages with teardrops, taken from a menu of 125 standard symbols provided by the phone company. The symbols have become the base for a kind of Morse code signal-service for millions of Japanese cell phone fanatics.
"I think drawings carry more feelings than written messages. I prefer to receive a drawing rather than a message," said Sumomo, a high school student. "When I'm happy I always e-mail a smiling face to my friends," she added.
In fact, chitchat in Japan is no longer from one ear to another but on-screen. The I-mail is a third cheaper than phone calls.
I-mail has become an umbilical chord between families and lovers, an essential tool for those seeking spouses, a must for students and young people.
For users that want extra functions, I-mode technology permits access to the Internet and to Photonet, a service that allows subscribers to deposit their personal photos in a provider system.
Boy calls girl and during their conversation gives her his photo access number. Once his photo pops up on her screen, she may keep talking -- or hang up.
Executives at board meetings also use keitai, often cupping them in one hand under the table to read, surreptitiously, incoming I-mode messages. Commuters, known for drowsing on the subways, are now glued to keitai screens.
The future for such calls looks even rosier.
Tsutsumi predicts that within the near future her customers will be able to consult a doctor and show the medic their injury on the phone screen. "Say ahh," the doc will order, and the keitai, held to the open throat, will beam, like a camera, the image of an inflamed tonsil or a swollen gland to the medic's own screen.
In the Japan of tomorrow, shopping will undergo a keitai revolution, analysts predict. Shopkeepers will show their wares on the phone to prospective customers. Junior can ask Mom by video phone if he should buy the Hokkaido tomato or the imported California variety. Women in doubt will consult their girlfriends on the phone: "How does this dress look to you, Yumisan?"
DoCoMo marketing executive Kouhei Kajimoto admits his company was surprised by the overwhelming acceptance of their I-mode mail service.
"We counted on about 3 million customers, instead we signed up 5 million the first year, and today, one year and three months after the service was launched, we have 6.8 million customers. Between 20,000 and 25,000 people sign up every day," he said.
Within 15 months after launching its wireless e-mail service, the company's market value tripled to $370 billion this month, making it, according to industry analysts, the most valuable telecom company in the world.
The desire among users to be in touch with one another has become a windfall for NTT and its subsidiary. The companies dominate Japan's telecom market, charging exorbitant fees in a protected home market -- up to $7,200 to connect a new subscriber and monthly rentals of $260.
In the past, Japan's automobile and electronics industries also accumulated vast profits on their protected home market, then plowed them into overseas ventures for a share of the global market.
For some time, NTT and DoCoMo have searched for a launching pad abroad for Japan's profit-fat telecom industry.
On May 8, NTT announced it would acquire 90 percent of the remaining shares it did not already own in the U.S. Web site manager Verio Inc. A day later, DoCoMo announced it was paying $4.5 billion for a 15 percent stake in the Dutch cellular company KPN Mobile.