bill - 8:56 am on Jan 17, 2009 (gmt 0)

The Japanese may have bypassed the wired technology and gone straight to wireless as you say.

No, that was the Chinese I was talking about. The Japanese have an extensive wired network [google.com].

But why do the Chinese / Japanese so prefer a mobile over a small laptop?

Wireless access in Japan via a dongle is just as common. However, it's not that they prefer one over the other. It's just that every phone in Japan has Internet access. It's been that way for about a decade now. I was just saying that when they do these Internet census proclamations they're including more than just wired PCs.