The Associated Press has an interesting story confirming what I observe all around me: the Japanese are rapidly entering a post-PC world. (Slashdot has the details, among other places.) Of course you'll see PCs, but they aren't by any means the center of the universe, and sales are declining with mobile phones, game consoles, the iPod, and home entertainment devices all taking marketshare.
One possible reason not mentioned in the article is the Japanese language: is the QWERTY-style keyboard comparatively more useful to enter Japanese text than a mobile phone keypad? However, I think Japan is leading the way and that other PC-saturated markets like the U.S. and certain European countries will exhibit similar trends.
The comments on Slashdot are interesting, with many people pointing out that PCs make great word processors, and that word processing doesn't require ever more powerful systems, so the churn rate is diminishing. I think that's true, but is word processing particularly important, especially at home? Word processing arose at a time when people still mailed business letters and documents. With ubiquitous e-mail, do people really need full blown word processors? I seldom fire up a word processing program.
My new and comparatively low tech Korean-made mobile telephone paired with a Japanese service provider offers rich e-mail (including sounds, pictures, videos, and compatibility with popular word processing and spreadsheet formats, plus PDF), a built-in answering machine and voice recorder, camera, video calling, direct PictBridge printing (Bluetooth or USB), personal information management functions (calendar, alarms, address book), Web browsing, a Japanese-English dictionary, and iPod-like functions (audio and video), among other features. And this is the simplest model I could find. Of course it makes sense that many people don't want or need a PC.
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