Japan has more old people than young people, which has led to an increasingly large senior citizen demographic in Japan’s cutting-edge mobile phone market. To cater for this formidable ’silver army’ (white-haired old people are commonly referred to as being ’silver’ here in Japan), leading phone providers are developing handsets specifically for this group of users. The latest example of which is NTT DoCoMo’s new F883iES model.
The F883iES, which is being dubbed as the RakuRaku Phone IV (rakuraku means ‘comfortable’ or ‘easy’), is set for release in August. The handset has special features for old people, including a system called ‘Super Clear Voice’, which automatically increases the level of speaker volume if it detects that the user is in a noisy environment. So there’ll be no need for uncle Albert to persist in hollering, “You’ll have to speak louder, I can’t HEAR YOU!”
And the RakuRaku Phone IV also has a built-in pedometer, which should be great for Japan’s legions of ’silver’ walkers and runners who want to measure their daily exercises. “Grow old gracefully with DoCoMo!” — is not one of NTT’s marketing slogans…
Good post.