The mobile future that wasn’t – Japanese Keitai Prototypes from 2000, 2001 and 2002

Back in the year 2000, the Japanese mobile phone market was the most advanced market in the world. DoCoMo’s newly launched service i-mode started practically the mobile revolution and Japanese handset makers became incredible creative in inventing new mobile device prototypes.

Latest since 2007 with the launch of the iPhone by an california based fruit company, all new phones became the long sought after smart phones the Japanese companies predicted back in the early years.

Flip-able mobile phone prototype by Hitachi, 2001

It’s time to look back at these early years, because many of the ideas and concepts integrated so successful into the iPhone where already available as prototypes back then, but only Apple was so bold and knowledgeable enough to integrate most of the good ideas into one single device.

We remember: In 2000, no mobile phone existed with full blown Internet access, there was no GPS and the integration of memory cards into a phone was an engineers dream. Even color screens were the future back then.

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