Japanese mobile ecosystem

The Japanes "docomo" mobile-phone technology has grown up in an unique ecosystem that makes it almost unsuitable for use anywhere else, tells Intelligent Life.

The closed-country period, the Edo Era (1602 - 1868) went for 265 years without wars or revolutions. The shogun families, or military dictators ruled the country; Edo was a merry place of peace and social stability.

The life on the islands has been shaped by the physical landscape of Japan, which packs one of the most crowded populations on earth onto narrow plains, bounded by sea and inhospitable mountains.