Google Android smart phone plays 'Catch-Up' in Japan

As Ichiro Suzuki steps up to the plate for Japan in the 10th inning of the World Baseball Classic final with the score tied, Yuki Yamaguchi is among the spectators watching the action on her mobile phone.

The 35-year-old clerical worker and 108 million other subscribers to services such as NTT DoCoMo Inc’s i-mode can surf the Web, download movies and pay bills on their handsets, something that’s been possible for years before such services were common in the West. The advanced state of Japan’s mobile- phone system will make it harder for Google Inc to win converts to its Android system, which will be released in the country as early as June, said telecommunications analyst Neil Mawston.

“Handsets in Japan have been smart for a number of years,” said Mawston at Strategy Analytics Ltd. in Milton Keynes, England. “The West is playing catch-up rather than showing anything new.”

Google’s Android, which allows for services such as navigation with street-level views, will run HTC Corp’s Magic handset, due to go on sale in Japan in June or July for as low as 25,000 yen ($262), according to DoCoMo, the country’s largest mobile-phone operator. It follows Apple Inc’s iPhone in seeking to achieve what global leaders Nokia Oyj and Samsung Electronics Co couldn’t: challenge Japan’s phone makers.

Nokia, the world’s largest maker of mobile phones, said on Nov 27 it was quitting the Japanese mass market. Japan’s top six mobile-phone vendors accounted for 81 per cent of handsets sold in the country in the year ended March, according to Tokyo- based MM Research Institute Ltd.

“We expect the HTC Magic to struggle just as the iPhone has,” said Mawston.

Yoshito Funabashi, a Tokyo-based Google spokeswoman, declined to comment.