Over the past few years, I've often been asked if file sharing - especially music file sharing - is as widespread in Japan as in the US and Europe. My answer has generally been something along the lines of 'it certainly exists here, but...

For the last four years now, KDDI/au has been setting the pace in Japan for mobile music services, launching the first mastertone service on its in 2002 and the first full-song download service two years later. The company has recorded a total of over 38 billion mastertone downloads and 78 million full-song over-the-air downloads. They have also achieved impressive handset sales, with more than 22.8 million mastertone-capable and 10.4 million full-song-capable KDDI mobile phones sold in Japan...

Back in 2001, as American music lovers were getting their first glimpse of a sleek new device called the iPod, software developers in Japan were busy writing the first Java applications (dubbed 'applis') for mobile phones.

When reading about a new artist (offline) in a music magazine or newspaper, I often find myself wishing that I could hear a sample of that artist's music as I read the article or interview.

On October 24, Japanese mobile phone users will be able for the first time to change operators without having to change their mobile phone number.

Over time, it is likely that this new promotional tool will help the company further increase its already massive share of both the chaku-uta market and the nascent full-song download market on i-mode.

Our writer investigates whether the "long tail" business model is at work in Japan's mobile music market.

While there is only enough memory available to store about 10 songs on the dedicated handset, the P902iS, it supports miniSD cards of up to 2GB in size, enough to hold about 1,000 tracks.

Panasonic's new FOMA phone (P902iS) goes on sale today in shops across Japan. At the same time, a much anticipated content category will appear for the first time on NTT DoCoMo's portal menu: Chaku-uta Full.

On May 13, the "Nihon Keizai Shimbun" reported that Apple Computer and Softbank were working together to develop the first 'iPod' mobile phone in Japan and planned to release the device by the end of this year.