Kamada's faith is grounded in the fact that Japan is home to dozens of consumer electronics manufacturers, and that the country is on schedule to be the first in the world to deploy a wireless third-generation (3G) infrastructure. For both the electronics manufacturers and Access, which has been working closely with them, it would seem the possibilities are nearly endless. "We are in a good position. Such an opportunity comes only once in a decade," Kamada said.

Access is perhaps best known for having developed the microbrowser for the i-mode terminals for NTT Docomo's wireless i-mode service in Japan. Kamada steered the development of that browser and designed the core of Compact HTML, a subset of HTML, while aggressively expanding the company's embedded browser business to a wide range of non-PC products.

While negotiating with NTT Docomo for i-mode service, Kamada proposed Compact HTML to the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) in February 1998. Access, along with Fujitsu Ltd., Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. Ltd., Mitsubishi Electric Corp. and Sony Corp., called for the development of a standard language for mobile Internet appliances that have limited hardware resources compared with PC-based Internet environments.

"Wireless Internet is not special; it should be Internet-compliant as much as possible," Kamada said. Nearly 20,000 Web sites can be read in Compact HTML. Because HTML compliance exists, information providers can design Compact-HTML-based Web pages easily.

Kamada said Compact HTML is a subset of HTML 4.0 and is intended to be fully compatible with the W3C HTML recommendation. When designing Compact HTML, Kamada envisioned it needing only a minimum of hardware resources: a CPU of several Mips to 10 Mips; RAM from 150 to 200 kbytes/second; and ROM from 200 to 300 kbytes/s excluding character fonts. There would be a total of four buttons, and a display that would likely consist of just eight 2-byte characters and six lines.

The proposal prompted W3C to form the Mobile Access Internet Group, which is working on making a subset of XHTML, the next generation of HTML, the W3C's recommendation. Access, Phone.com, Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. Ltd. and W3C are working together to finalize the subset, titled XHTML Basic. They've already compiled a working draft forreview.

"There is no big difference between Compact HTML and XHTML Basic. Some features concerning color display have been added, but there won't be any difference that will have an impact on programming. We defined XHTML Basic to be almost the same as Compact HTML," Kamada said. Access is already developing browsers that comply with XHTML Basic.

Access has focused on network protocols for nearly 15 years. Kamada and his colleague, Toru Arakawa, founded Access in 1985. Arakawa had launched a business when he was a 19-year-old university student studying science and engineering; six years later, he became president of Access. Kamada, meanwhile, started working at Access to earn tuition fees for his post-graduate studies in science and engineering at Tokyo University. He finished his masters and doctoral work in his first five years at Access and now heads the company's research and development efforts.

"We usually develop technologies to the level where we can demonstrate them," Kamada said. "When NTT Docomo was looking for a compact browser for its cellular phone-based Internet service, we were ready for them. It was lucky for us."

"We see wireless as nothing special, so it can use the Internet standard and can use standard servers. Only the program should be made smaller for wireless applications-and that is our business," Kamada said.

Access expects that more than 15 million appliances will house its embedded browser in Japan this year. One popular use for the embedded browsers will be for Sony's PlayStation. "By treating wireless networks as nothing special, the microbrowser can be used not only for mobile phones but also for various other products. These products can share Internet content written in Compact HTML," Kamada said.

Extending this policy further, Access is aiming its microbrowser at fixed telephones as well. Modern phones usually have small LCD displays, but "with our browser, the home telephone becomes an i-mode-like terminal," Kamada promised.