Japan: More mobile Internet users than PC

According to a recent government report, Japan claims it had 69.2 million people accessing the Internet from mobile devices compared to 66 million conventional PC users in 2005. An estimated 48.6 million used both a mobile device and a PC to access the Internet, which puts the country's Internet population at 85.3 million users, or two-thirds of Japan's population. While the report didn't break out different mobile content sectors, the total mobile Internet commerce market reached $6.3 billion last year, with a large proportion of that coming from wallpapers and ringtones. Last year was also the first year that sales of conventional goods sold from mobile Internet sites exceeded sales of mobile content.

The report's findings seem to counter claims Japan's Softbank CEO Masayoshi Son made last week: "Users are not satisfied with the small, limited content of current DoCoMo, i-mode or au EZweb services... I want to bring the broad world of the Internet, with Yahoo as the center, to the mobile world." While a move to a more comprehensive Internet experience is sure to come to the mobile platform, it seems Japan's users have adapted to it in its present form quite well.

For more on Japan's mobile Internet usage:
- check out this article from Digital World Tokyo