I have just written an article about "Smartphone-ization of cars" in Nikkei Business Online in Japanese. Essentially, it talks about Ford's "MyFordTouch" strategy, to position itself as relevant to youth culture, who shifted from automobile-centric to mobie/net-centric lifestyle. In it, I just praised Ford's sincere effort, but I implied a sarcasm to Japanese automakers, who complain that recent Japanese youth are not interested in cars, and say that it is the sign of the young people becoming "too tame." Sounds like they put blame on their (potential) customers, rather than trying to change themselves.

Well, after I wrote this, I received a lot of interesting comments from readers, and one of them showed me another interesting statistics from AdAge. It says that U.S. youth have exactly the same tendency to the Japanese youth.

http://adage.com/digital/article?article_id=144155

It supports what I said in the article. I am also a bit relieved to imagine that my son, who is fast approaching to the driving age, may not hurry to drive a car!

Michi