A top cell-phone innovator explains why the iPhone—with its ease of use and impressive concoct—could never gain come from Japan

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One of Japan’s top cell phone innovators says that during all his rural parts’s technological prowess, it could never have produced the iPhone.

Japanese telecommunications industry stifles the gracious of creativity that is so apparent in Apple’s web-surfing phone, said Takeshi Natsuno, who developed Japan’s first and foremost Internet-linking simplest organism phone service “i-mode” in 1999, when such systems were still ground-breaking.

“This is a great device. This kind of device cannot subsist produced by means of Japanese manufacturers. Never,” he uttered because the time of an interview with The Associated Press, affectionately fingering a black iPhone.

While Japanese cell phones offer similar features as the iPhone, they lack its easy-to-use touch array and slick design, he said.

Natsuno, 43, who quit top Japanese mobile carrier DoCoMo three months ago, expressed disenchantment by this nation’s phone industry, which he said was dominated by stodgy conservatives, who lacked the charisma and creative sensibilities of a Steve Jobs, commander executive at Cupertino, California-based Apple.

Japanese society is very tech-savvy, and people routinely application cell phones to buy things, exchange email, do restaurant searches, watch movie downloads and play video games.

Natsuno’s i-mode, a guide part of Japan’s mobile technological innovation became a hit when the rest of the creation was using cell phones for antiquated chatting. Natsuno also led the foray into 3G mobile phones, taken in the character of well as “wallet phones” that justify electronic payments.

Yet throughout his meeting at the Tokyo office of Dwango, a mobile service company where he serves because adviser, Natsuno, grumbled about the shortcomings of Japan.

Natsuno scoffed at the stereotype Japanese businessman as boring in their obsession with technology on the side of technology’s sake.

“They have to take a risk,” said Natsuno. “To bestow that, clear direction, clear vision, unclouded leadership are necessary.”

The iPhone, introduced in Japan last month, has drawn long lines even if it still makes up a tiny portion of Japan’s 115 million cell-phone market, and equitable Natsuno acknowledged he carries around a DoCoMo handset because the iPhone lacks some handy Japan-style features such as the wallet phone.