After e-mail, Internet access and cameras, music will likely be the next killer application for cell phones in Japan, where online distribution is yet to catch on.
While cell phones may not become an instant threat to portable music players like Apple's iPod, their sheer volume -- some 85 million in Japan -- presents a vast potential pool of portable music-playing competitors.
Late last month, the country's second-largest wireless carrier, KDDI Corp., started a music downloading service for its au brand of mobile phones. Instead of offering the usual 30-second sample, however, the Chaku-uta Full (Ring Tone Songs Full) service sends the entire tune, just as online music services do for computer users, in the widely used MP3 format.