Friday Review: Turning Japanese

'Big in Japan' is a tongue-in-cheek way of poking fun at something – typically a musical act – that may see success in Japan but is unlikely to achieve universal popularity. After three days in Tokyo at Ericsson's leisure, I'm left wondering whether this phrase will apply to smart cities. "Japan has probably one of the best prerequisites for making a smart city materialise," declared Mats Olsson, head of Asia-Pacific at Ericsson, during the vendor's Business Innovation Forum in Tokyo this week. "It has a government that is working intimately with operators, understanding what they need to do," and in NTT DoCoMo, KDDI and Softbank it has three strong telcos, he said: "[They] have all achieved critical mass, they are all profitable…