M-commerce is Future of Japan Retail

Some 60 million people travel every day on Japanese trains. That’s half of the nation’s population!

Japan’s e-commerce is only one-fifth the size of the market in the US – abt. $30 billion.

However, Japan has a $3.5 billion mobile commerce (m-commerce) that is leaps and bounds ahead of other countries. And…it expects to continue to grow in the coming years.

Japanese phones can work as credit cards, portable music players and even train tickets.

Last year…more Japanese used their mobile phones to access the Internet than their personal computers.

As much as 80% of e-commerce by teenagers 15-19 was done on mobile phones in 2005!

M-commerce is possible in Japan partly because Japan has the highest number of 3G service users of any country in the world. South Korea is second but still does NOT have m-commerce.

Japan’s NTT DoCoMo and KDDI are now shifting to an even faster high-speed access. This will no doubt give boost to the m-commerce market.

In Japan only 13% of e-commerce is done with credit cards compared to 42% of purchases in the US.

However, if a customer sees something they want and can punch out their credit card number on their mobile phone, that number is likely to change.

What do you think?