Cell shopping makes wallets redundant in Japan

Japanese office worker Satoshi Tada pays for shopping, wins free food and gets store discounts all by waving his cell phone.

“I use it pretty much every day,”the 25-year-old said.“You can charge money on it right there if needed, and you don’t have to run around trying to find an ATM.” The world’s top firms such as Visa Inc and Nokia are still mostly testing phone use for payments, but in Japan, more than 50 million, or about half of all cell phone users,already carry phones capable of serving as wallets.

Japan has pioneered not just the technology but also the business models that will pave the way for wallet phones to become a standard payment method in the future. Some 700 million people worldwide are expected to own such phones by 2013.

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Rupee slide persists

The rupee fell the sharpest in a decade on speculation that the trouble on Wall Street would lead to emerging-market asset sell-offs by jittery global investors.The currency hit its lowest level against the dollar in more than two years. The Sensex also fell for a sixth day in tandem with equity markets world wide. It lost a marginal 12.47 points to end at 13,518.80, heading for its first annual loss since 2001.

The rupee may come under more intense pressure as FIIs continue to hawk Indian equities. The Indian currency ended at 46.89/90 against the dollar, off a trough of 46.99-its lowest since July 24, 2006-as banks arbitraged with a weaker overseas market. Dealers suspected RBI intervened to halt the slide just short of 47 against the greenback. JPM organ forecasts the rupee to drop to 47 by the end of the year. The rupee was the second biggest loser among the ten most active currencies in Asia outside Japan on Tuesday.

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Niche opportunities abound in China

During the last 10 years, a sea change has occurred as to how Indian businesses view China. The fear and awe has been replaced by a realistic understanding of Chinese import ‘threat’. Over the decade, Indian businesses acquainted themselves with Chinese Markets by visiting Chinese trade fairs and developing business relationships.

However, during this limited exposure to China what Indian businesses, particularly SMEs, missed was the rise of Chinese Markets: for imported consumer and producer goods as well as for raw materials and intermediate products for processing for export to third-country Markets. Indeed, China is set to overtake Japan as the biggest importer in Asia by around 2015. Many countries, particularly Asian, have lapped up the opportunities in the burgeoning Chinese market.

Asian exports to China increased on average by over 46% a year from the year 2000 to reach $52.4 billion in 2005. That was much higher than the annual growth rate of 4.3% in Asian exports to all Markets outside China. Malaysia became the largest exporter to China ($12.7 billion) within Asian in 2003, a position previously occupied by Singapore at $10.1 billion. The previous trade deficits became surpluses in Malaysia and the Philippines, while deficits were lower in Thailand and Singapore in 2003. The Philippines’ exports to China have quintupled since 1999 (2005).

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