KDDI and Okinawa Cellular’s joint venture, the “au My Page”, has just topped one million users as of January 20th. “au My Page” is a free mobile phone portal that is highly customizable and allows users to store up to 100mb of content (addresses, email, photos, etc) on the network itself and integrates with their DUOBLOG blog service. While 100mb is hardly anything these days, it’s also easily accessible from a PC or another terminal.
The “au MyPage” search, avatar, and data uploaders
Such huge popularity of the “au My Page” service has come in only three months since its release, and this highlights the fundamental differences between how Japanese and the rest of the world live digital lifestyles. In Japan, the world revolves around the mobile phone and adding more functions to it, while America tends to function on the computer/internet aspect of things. Why create a special customized portal when you can already get that with Google? Wouldn’t it be better to simply be able to access those features from a mobile instead of creating something new? I guess it depends where your priorities are, and Japan’s priorities start with the mobile and go from there.
The DUOBLOG service makes mobile blogs easy and accessible by any phone or PC
In this way, Japan is still behind in the internet world, but still way ahead when it comes to providing mobile features. The ‘au My Page” service attempts to bring the phone and the PC closer together by making it possible to customize the portal page (wallpaper, news, content, bookmarked pages, etc) on both the phone and PC. Japan makes phones with PC functions, and America is making PC’s that can act as phones, but will these two ways of thinking converge at some point?
Press Release from KDDI
Michael is the Editor of JapanTrends.com and Director of the 
