Why Japan has better gadgets than the United States (via Marginal Revolution).

Unlike in the United States, where consumer electronics is an overwhelmingly male-driven industry, the critical vector in the propagation of keitai culture was its embrace by adolescent girls. That this demographic drives the market is no coincidence. Like many Japanese marketers, NTT DoCoMo had determined that i-Mode would live and die based on whether teen fashion queens adopted the handsets as the season's must-own accessories. A year and a half of aggressive marketing later, with 30 million active users, DoCoMo became the world's largest Internet access provider, surpassing longtime leader America On-Line. More than 10 million of these users are young women.