Everyone pretty much agrees that Japan boasts the most advanced mobile infrastructure in the world. After all, this is the country with 100 million 3G subscribers, 120 new handsets every year (picture: Hitachi Mobile Hi-Vision CAM Wooo), the first mobile phone featuring a decent web browser (in 1999) etc. etc.
But it’s pretty hard to keep up with what’s going in Japan’s super-vibrant mobile world if you don’t live here (I’m trying to keep MobileCrunch readers informed with my postings), which is why I’d like to recommend a new(ish) site called Infinita.tv that I recently stumbled upon.
It’s basically a video blog site set up by Infinita (a mobile research, consulting and development firm based out of Tokyo). There are 12 short videos at this point, allowing you to quickly get precise information on why Japan leads mobile, what people here can do with their phones (in contrast to the US or Europe), what kind of unique mobile services there are etc.
Excellent information all around and it’s free. Here’s an example video (the next video will be up on Infinita.tv tomorrow). It shows how Japanese people use cell phones for e-payments.
Infinita just recently launched a YouTube channel, and I can also recommend following CEO Kei Shimada who regularly tweets news from Japan’s mobile industry directly from Tokyo (and in English). Their SlideShare presentations can be found here.