After you've established your business presence in Japan, a clear and detailed understanding of your market and what you're up against is vital to developing and maintaining a sustainable strategic advantage.

In some cases this may be as simple as identifying the players and their relative strengths and weaknesses but in other cases, the competitive landscape for your product may be quite different from what you'd expect.

For example, take a new Internet Service Provider trying to break into the Japanese market. In addition to other ISPS, it will also have to contend with other conventional alternatives to its service such as telecommunications companies providing ISDN and ADSL connections, Cable Television Companies and a variety of dial-up services.

But the greatest threat to ISPs comes from the mobile phone companies. Many Japanese families are yet to be connected to the Internet using their PCs, but have e-mail and surfing capabilities right on their mobile handsets. In addition to this, many mobile phones can now boast digital cameras that allow photographs to be attached to e-mails--creating unwelcome competition for the digital camera companies.

The widespread adoption of this new technology has exceeded all expectations and is unique to the Japanese Market.

In Japan, developing a competitive advantage requires a clear and detailed understanding of what competitors in your industry are doing.