The novelty of the iPhone in North America may not matter much in a country where people are used to hi-tech handsets that double as electronic transit passes, credit cards, mobile TVs, GPS devices, music players, internet and email browsers, photo and video devices, and secure personal data storages using finger-print or face recognition technology.

Business Week reporter Kenji Hall gives a good overview of the state of innovation in the mobile communication industry of Japan and the options that Apple may be negotiating with NTT DoCoMo, Japan’s largest wireless operator. You can read the full article here.

I remember reading about one of DoCoMo’s innovations back in early 2005. The ‘Finger Phone’ (called “Finger Whisper”) used bone vibrations to conduct sound instead of ear pieces. I4U News reported that the Finger Whisper phone is answered by touching forefinger to thumb and then by putting the forefinger in the ear to hear who is ringing. The call is ended by again touching forefinger to thumb. The phone has no keypad but users can make a call by saying out loud the number they want to reach.

DoCoMo was prototyping the phone in 2000 and had anticipated launching to retail by 2005. I haven’t heard much about it recently though. I wonder if Canadian consumers would ever be attracted to something like this. After all, seeing someone walking down the street with his finger in his ear is no more strange than seeing people pace around the side walk talking to themselves (the usefulness of hands-free communication still does not justify how ridiculous people look like when using a bluetooth ear piece in public, specially when their hands are visibly free to hold up the phone like the rest of us mobile-yielding common folk).