Mind the gadget gap

Posted By Aditya Tiwathia Wednesday, November 1, 2006 - 12:43 PM Share

Japanese Phones The Japanese have stuffed yet another item into their crammed cell phones: their wallets. For the past few years, commuters in Japan have been using their phones to swipe through ticket barriers on mass transportation. Now phones can also be used at vending machines, movie theaters, grocery stores, and even some airlines. So, what if you lose your phone? No worries. A new phone from carrier NTT DoCoMo has face-recognition technology using a built-in camera.

While this technology is still years away from American shores, San Francisco is already preparing. Its transport authority just announced that it is upgrading turnstiles to allow future commuters on the BART to swipe cellphones. But even when these phones hit U.S. markets, they are unlikely to see a similar brush-fire popularity. That's because Japanese cosumers line up to pay premiums for the latest wizardry churned out by local tech companies. The reasons why Japanese go high tech while Americans go WalMart, as Jeff Yang points out, may be as much about culture as about technology. It seems by the time the U.S. catches up, Asia's phones will be doing everything but making toast.

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