6. Conclusion and outlook

The current state of the Japanese web can only be described as overly complex and non-future-proof—change is urgently needed. Web standards such as XHTML and CSS are powerful tools for making this shift, especially considering the increasing support for these technologies in the current generation of mobile and non-mobile browsing devices.

So far, it is unclear when the transition to web standards is going to happen and how long it will take. Especially mobile-only sites that target a specific carrier and heavily rely on its proprietary markup (e.g. i-mode's iswf attribute or carrier specific emoji) may run into problems when switching to an XHTML and CSS based design. Other sites will have less problems and be able to make the leap more easily.

One thing is certain though: if ever accomplished, the change to standards based websites will have a enormous impact on the Japanese web, allowing for device independent, universal access to online information.