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Japanese stores took delivery of no second-generation
mobile telephones in January for the first time since their launch
as shipments of advanced handsets soared, an industry group said
Tuesday.
Japan and South Korea are at the
forefront of third-generation (3G) phones, which offer high-speed
Internet access and other interactive features and have not even
entered the market in many developing nations.
Manufacturers sent 4.08 million
cellphones to Japanese stores in January, the Japan Electronics and
Information Technology Industries Association said.
"For the first time, the
number of second-generation models was zero," it said.
Japan becomes the second country
to be virtually finished with second-generation following South
Korea, according to Nomura Research.
Japanese stores continue to offer
a small number of second-generation phones, but it is almost
impossible for new users to start fresh subscriptions.
At the end of February, nearly 85
percent of Japanese mobile users were carrying third-generation or
equivalent phones. Japan's top-ranked NTT DoCoMo Inc. in 2001 became
the world's first company to offer 3G.
Despite the success in Japan and
South Korea, 3G has caught on more slowly in other countries amid
questions over whether customers will pay much steeper prices for
features they could find on their home computer.
Third-generation or advanced
second-generation accounts for about 50 percent of North American
cellphones and 10 percent of Western European mobiles, according to
industry surveys.
In Japan, mobile operators have
increasingly written off second-generation phones as a source of
profit and have been developing more advanced features to woo
customers.
More than 60 percent of the
phones delivered by manufacturers in January are equipped for
digital television broadcasts.
Japan began digital broadcasts in
2006 that allow mobile phone users to watch several hours of
interrupted television on their phones without recharging the
battery.
"It's the third straight
month that such phones make up more than half of the mobile
phones," the industry association said.
Some 20 million Japanese now have
phones to watch digital broadcasts, which major networks offer for
free.
--AFP
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