I’m sure at least some of you have heard the news that KDDI Mobile is starting an MVNO here in the US. The potential for industry-shaking devices coming here made my hair stand on end… but the dream was dashed quickly.

Let me be clear on this. In Japan, KDDI and DoCoMo release phones like fashion designers release clothing – with seasonal collections of devices in new unique colors with new amazing features. Think about that for a second. Here in the US, we have one or two phones a year that might excite people into ditching their old hardware. If you’re just an average consumer and not an enthusiast, you have even less motivation – that’s why half the people I know have RAZRs.

Only recently have we started hearing the whole “cell phone as an accessory” thing being taken seriously. But come on – we’re talking about a Blackberry or Sidekick hanging on your belt. Compare that to KDDI’s current lineup in Japan:

If you can’t find a phone in KDDI or DoCoMo’s catalog that does your personality justice, well you’re just too indie for words.

This unique variety doesn’t just excite me as a consumer, but as a developer as well. The look of the hardware entices the average consumer to upgrade much more frequently, but whether they care or not, they’re also upgrading their handset capabilities as well. As a developer, you then get to make use of newer, more powerful platforms and actually have significant user adoption. Browser rendering will get better across your whole user market, platforms like Flash Lite will penetrate more quickly, and existing firmware bugs will go out of style with the hardware.

It’s a great dream for us here in the US, but lets take a look at KDDI’s US offering:

Man, I’m surprised I don’t see a StarTac there.

Now I know it’s a bit much to hope for – having the KDDI catalog of hardware designed and certified for their infrastructure in Japan to be magically moved over here, but it’s hard to even believe it’s the same company. Device certification here in the US is a nightmare according to random people I’ve spoken to who claim to know.

I bet if Helio had its way, they’d have a much larger catalog as well – but instead they focus on several very targeted devices. Consumers have to buy unlocked devices like the Nokia N95 to even find the same device painted a different color.

I think if we get the carrier certification bottleneck out of the way here, we’ll have a much better chance at having a selection like this. For this to happen, my belief is that we need a more uniform set of functionality. Feature phones need to have a closer capability set to smartphones, and runtime environments need to be more uniform and implementations regulated better. Hell, I’d be happy if we just stick Flash Lite on every single phone and have Adobe implement every runtime environment for every phone themselves, then use Apple Safari’s Webkit as the base code for every mobile web browser… like that’s gonna happen.