“I started reading more about the shopping habits of consumers in Japan and China via WeChat starting in 2016, and SMS has been on my radar since then,” said Junior Pence, CMO of Peace Out Skincare. "When the coronavirus hit, we expedited our SMS plans because we wanted another channel to communicate with our customers.".

Where it’s headed next: We expect that Propeller Health will continue expanding internationally by way of big pharma: Since August, patients in Japan taking Novartis’ drugs for uncontrolled asthma have been able to sign up for Propeller’s digital therapies, for instance.

Japan continues to be in third place in overall ad spending, with a market about 2.5 times smaller than China’s ($42.67 billion in 2020).

“Mobile has seen explosive growth over the last decade,” said Paps Shaikh, commercial director for EMEA at Nextdoor, a hyperlocal social media platform. “But with more people working from home, desktop usage is spiking, which is a bit of an anomaly.” Advertising spend will, to a degree, follow suit.

When consultancy AlixPartners probed the buying behavior of internet users in France, Germany, the UK, China, Japan and the US in 2019, more than half said free delivery influenced their decision to order. In France, that share was 75%—higher than any other country polled, including the UK (57%) and Germany (53%).

In the past, Amazon had been toeing slowly into the space in Australia, India, and Japan, and through a partnership with Citi in the US. In August, the etail giant, which had offered some limited installment loans of its own, dove in headfirst through a new partnership with Affirm.

The same is true in Japan. This year, 85.5% of smartphone users will use mobile messaging apps, leaving little room for growth. Of Japan’s 66.5 million monthly users, 90.4% will use domestic platform Line. Key Takeaways. The pandemic has converted new mobile messaging app users.

Metawave is also partnering with Mirait, a telecom engineering firm, to deploy mmWave 5G in Japan. Phantom Auto. What it does: Phantom Auto offers a teleoperation platform that allows users to remotely control and navigate autonomous vehicles at long ranges. Phantom works with customers on solutions for passenger vehicles, trucks, shuttles, industrial vehicles, and delivery robots. Founded: 2017.

Japan. Japan hoped to launch its 5G networks in conjunction with the 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo, but the pandemic crushed those plans. Nonetheless, Japanese networks did launch 5G in 2020, and 11.9 million users had signed up by the end of the year. That should rise to 32.1 million users in 2021, according to data released in June 2020 by Yano Research Institute. EU-4 and the UK.

Among those willing to share data to stop the virus, CodeFuel found that the vast majority (84%) of respondents would share their health data—while 58%, 36% and 31%, respectively, would share their location, social media data and search history. A positive diagnosis for COVID-19 may be cause for even more sharing and surveillance.

On February 3, the Diamond Princess cruise ship was quarantined off the coast of Japan. More than 700 of its 3,700 passengers would eventually test positive for COVID-19, making it one of the largest outbreaks outside of China. In March, a second cruise ship, the Grand Princess, would be quarantined off the coast of California. Over 100 passengers and crew aboard that ship would also test positive.

The highest levels of comfort came from younger demographics and people in China, India and Japan. The rollout of ADAS—which includes such things as automatic emergency braking, lane keep assist, automatic parking and sign recognition—is paving the road toward acceptance. In recent years, drivers have become increasingly enthusiastic about these semi-autonomous features.