Inputting Far East Languages

[Rubber Duck]

It would seem that there are massive movements afoot to greatly improve the efficiency of inputting devices. Here are a few examples.

Qwerty Style Chinese Keyboard:

http://www.fi.muni.cz/usr/wong/teaching/chinese/notes/node10.html

Japanese Mobiles - Handwriting recognition:

http://www.3g.co.uk/PR/Sept2005/1855.htm

These developments, and other similar initiatives are potential huge for not just the domain industry, but the shift in power of the world economy.

Japan's lost decade has been as much to do with its inability to capitalise on the growth the US has enjoyed from the development of online markets, as it has the so called "economic bubble". It has not been able to do this effectively to date due to the higher barriers the Peoples of the Far East experience in going online.

To date ecommerce has been largely a English phenomenon. Even countries like France, Italy and even Germany have lagged a longway behind the US, UK. By contrast Korea and Thailand which are written uniquely in their own phonetic alphabets have faired comparatively well. It would seem that pace of change is going to accelerate again and there will be once more a sudden shift in balance of economic power in the world.

Best Regards
Dave Wrixon

 

[Edwin]

My, you do seem to concoct a lot of fanciful theories about Japan from your distant UK vantagepoint...

In actual fact, the lag in ecommerce in Japan has nothing whatsoever to do with character input methods, but with the fact that relatively few people (compared to Europe or the US - the numbers are in the millions, but as a % of population it's much lower) have credit cards. Most payments are still made by "furikomi" (i.e. direct bank-to-bank transfer) even for relatively small amounts e.g. $50 or less, which really slows things down. Add to that the fact that merchant accounts are very expensive and hard to get, and you're basically where we are today. (It's true that EARLY PC adoption was slowed in the 1980s by poor character input technology, but that became a non-issue ages ago).

As for the "higher barriers the Peoples of the Far East experience in going online", those are also a figment of your imagination as far as Japan is concerned. Getting online here is probably cheaper (for a given speed/quality of connection) than in any other major economy, with fast, reliable, truly unlimited high-speed broadband (8Mbps-100Mbps) available from about $20 a month.

I've been here since the days of 2.4Kb modems so I guess I'm pretty qualified to talk about this kind of thing

 

[Rubber Duck]

My, you do seem to have a lot of fanciful theories about Japan from your distant UK vantagepoint...

In actual fact, the lag in ecommerce in Japan has nothing whatsoever to do with character input methods, but with the fact that relatively few people (compared to Europe or the US - the numbers are in the millions, but as a % of population it's much lower) have credit cards. Most payments are still made by "furikomi" (i.e. direct bank-to-bank transfer) even for relatively small amounts e.g. $50 or less, which really slows things down. Add to that the fact that merchant accounts are very expensive and hard to get, and you're basically where we are today.

As for the "higher barriers the Peoples of the Far East experience in going online", those are also a figment of your imagination. Getting online here is probably cheaper (for a given speed/quality of connection) than in any other major economy, with fast, reliable, truly unlimited high-speed broadband (8Mbps-100Mbps) available from about $20 a month.

Well that is very interesting and an obvious handicap. Having used credit cards for purchasing from Japan I must admit I rather assumed that it was commonplace there. Having a banking sector dominated by state owned companies probably hasn't helped, but that is another big change in the pipeline.

It would seem unlikely that Japan is going to remain immune from the Plastic Habit forever, so a huge consumer boom can only be just around the corner! Credit Cards have always proved a major economic driver everywhere else.

Be interesting to see to what extent the adoption of credit cards will provide an immediate impetus to ecommerce.

Actually all this is enough to make you quite bullish about the economic outlook in Japan.

Best Regards
Dave Wrixon

 

[Edwin]

The banking sector is not dominated by state owned companies here. You're thinking of CHINA.

I'm going to give up at this point, it's too much effort trying to keep your fantastical stories straight.

 

[Rubber Duck]

http://www.euromonitor.com/Financial_Cards_in_Japan

Credit cards steadily gaining popularity

While the review period saw a relative degree of reluctance among Japanese consumers to spend, due to declining income and a deteriorating labour market, the standing amount on credit cards showed a significant increase, indicating that credit card utilisation has now gained acceptance and popularity in the country.

The number of credit card transactions in Japan increased by 41% over the review period. Credit card transaction value reached ¥25,077 billion ion 2003. However, the number of credit cards in circulation declined by 1% in that year, due in part to the rising popularity of mobile-enabled card payment (ie m-commerce).

http://www.icma.com/info/quick-facts.htm

5. 2003 Top 10 Countries

VISA/MC (Credit + Debit)
(Cards in Circulation)
000's
Rank Country Cards
1 USA 755,300
2 CHINA 177,359
3 BRAZIL 148,435
4 UK 125,744
5 JAPAN 121,281
6 GERMANY 109,482

http://www.economist.com/research/backgrounders/displaybackgrounder.cfm?bg=1021193

Japan's banks carry a large amount of blame for the country's moribund economic performance in the 1990s. Because they did not have enough capital to write off bad loans, and also faced social pressures to keep weak borrowers afloat, they found themselves weakened in turn by $1.2 trillion in non-performing loans.

Junichiro Koizumi, Japan's prime minister, and Heizo Takenaka, head of the Financial Services Agency, have made some headway in solving the banks' problems: the three biggest have all cut their bad loans sharply. Mr Koizumi hopes to privatise the postal system, which has historically been exempt from paying most taxes despite holding far more assets than the big banks. Other government-backed lenders also need reform.

Best Regards
Dave Wrixon

I've been here since the days of 2.4Kb modems so I guess I'm pretty qualified to talk about this kind of thing

Yes, know all about that, I have BT's 1.0MBytes service which equates to about 2 screens every 5 minutes!

Actually, doing a quick calculation, that means the Japan only has about one card per man, woman and child compared with over 2 for the UK. I start to see the problem, hardly enough to sustain ecommerce perhaps! Of course these figures neglect Amex, Diners or indeed any locally issued cards, of which I am afraid I have no knowledge.

Best Regards
Dave Wrixon