The Keitai Revolution: Mobile Commerce in Japan

Throughout the late 1990s, much of the industrial world salivated at the prospect of electronic commerce, the marriage of technology and business that threatened to undo the verities of retail, wholesale and financial operations around the world. It is easy, even a few years on, with the excitement dissipated by the step-wise failure of many dot com visions, to forget the excitement that reigned through the last half of the decade. E-retailers like Amazon.com threatened to undermine the entire book-selling sector. On-line financial services, from bill payment to stock trading, transformed the banking and stock brokerage business. Auction sites, like eBay, reintroduced barter into the western economy. Entertainment companies, newspapers, and magazines rushed on-line, determined to find market share and hefty returns among the digiteratia. Japan lagged well behind in this commercial explosion, to the point that the country was ridiculed by those who ‘knew’ where the digital revolution was heading.1 That the nation was not sophisticated enough to use credit and debit cards and thus participate in on-line commerce simply indicated how far behind Japan had fallen in the digital race.2