Will mobile novels written on mobile phones take root in America or Europe? Not likely. It’s way faster to type on a keyboard in Western languages than it is on a mobile keypad. In Japanese this is not the case. In fact, most of the students I’ve seen here type much faster on their phones than on an actual computer keyboard. It’s just the nature of the input methods and the language itself. In other words, Japanese is perfectly suited for input on a mobile phone, and English is not.

Another reason this will not be a trend in places like North America is that we simply don’t have large blocks of time to read things on our mobile phones. Aside from the city dwellers who take the subway or train in the morning, most Americans and Canadiens get to work by car. Once you get to work, or once you get home, why would you read from your mobile if you could just pick up a book or a Kindle which are much easier on the eyes and more convenient to use? Most people in Japan spend at least an hour or two a day sitting or standing on a train/bus, and not so much time at home. It’s the reason why mobile devices are popular here. Americans have a different lifestyle, and a different set of priorities. Not all trends in Japan eventually make it to the States.

In fact, have you ever asked yourselves why all these cool Japanese phones never made it big in America? I mean, if they’ve been around for so long, why didn’t we adopt them earlier? Sony, Toshiba, Panasonic, Sharp, and Fujitsu all make phones in Japan, but not abroad. Well, they did test these phones out in some North American markets a while back, and Americans simply didn’t care for them. Too many features that we deemed useless or frivolous, and an interface too complicated for most people to learn (not because Americans are slow learners, but the interfaces are made intuitive for a completely different culture- the Japanese love their complicated menu systems). Give kudos to Blackberry and Apple who’ve given people devices with all (or more) of the features found on Japanese keitais and adapted them to a market with different priorities and lifestyles than the Japanese. Not only that, but the iPhone jumped ahead of Japanese phones in a significant way when it announced the 3rd-party app store, and Google’s Android platform is going to allow for an even greater degree of developer freedom. The ball is now back in Japan’s court to one-up America again, but knowing the nature of business in Japan (ie. closed) the partnerships that Google and Apple have used to build their platforms will never be replicated in this country. However, they can count on a legion of users who are so addicted to the niche culture of keitais here that iPhone poses no real threat in Japan. But, it’s starting to kick ass everywhere else and that has them worried because it further highlights the fact that in the big business of mobile phones, Japan can’t seem to get a foothold in foreign markets like it did with other industries.