You may have seen the report of a recent survey from Mitsubishi that the iPhone would be very welcome in Japan.

that got me to thinking about how quickly the mantle of technological world leader passes from country to country - sometimes even back and forth.

The United States was clearly at the forefront of the personal computer revolution in the early 1980s - with first Apple and soon after the PC.  But by the middle to the end of that decade, we began hearing about new generations of computing coming out of Japan.

Nowadays, Japan is clearly in the lead in a whole range of technologies, from commercialized robots to hybrid cars (I drive a Prius and love it).

But

how about personal computers, cell phones, digital personal media?  Clearly iPods are American, cell phones come from all by, and personal computers are largely American in cutting edge - what else is there other than Macs and Dells?  Windows, of course, whatever you might think of it, is American.  Jobs and Gates have clearly brought the leading edge back to America.

Meanwhile, the Japanese taste for new tech has made Japan an eager consumer, whether not an innovator, in new digital gadgetry.

And so the iPhone typifies what is already the case: another example of a new creation from an American company, which should catch on really big in Japan.

Original post by Chris