Europe finally joined Japan in delivering meaningful W-CDMA numbers, while the USA also made leaps in EV-DO. We expect both of these technologies will double their subscriber counts in 2005.

The thing that hurt us was lack of people. If we had numbers, it would have been a different match.

3G subscribers will pass 50 million at the end of 2005. More importantly, European 3G markets are now outpacing Japan. The outlook for 3G is healthy provided that operators and their handset partners can expand beyond postpaid only users into the larger, but more price elastic, prepaid user segments.

We are taking a look back into Europe and the USA and getting more helicopters from there,

In Paris the cashiers sit rather than stand. They run your goods over a scanner, tally up the price, and then ask you for exact change. The story they give is that there aren't enough euros to go around. "The entire EU is short on coins."

And I say, "Really?" because there are plenty of them in Germany. I'm never asked for exact change in Spain or Holland or Italy, so I think the real problem lies with the Parisian cashiers, who are, in a word, lazy. Here in Tokyo they're not just hard working but almost violently cheerful. Down at the Peacock, the change flows like tap water. The women behind the registers bow to you, and I don't mean that they lower their heads a little, the way you might if passing someone on the street. These cashiers press their hands together and bend from the waist. Then they say what sounds to me like "We, the people of this store, worship you as we might a god.

There appears to be an acceptance of a weaker dollar trend even if Europe and Japan are not happy with it. The Americans are probably only too happy to see the dollar depreciate.