Time magazine has picked Kazutomo Robert Hori, president and chief executive officer of Cybird Co., a mobile Internet-content provider in Tokyo, as one of the magazine's 15 "Global Influentials" for 2002.
Hori's "revolutionary idea -- to charge subscription fees to cell phone users for online content -- helped hatch Japan's mobile-Internet industry," said the Asian edition of the U.S. magazine, published Monday.
Born in Washington, Hori, 37, graduated from Kwansei Gakuin University in Hyogo Prefecture in 1987 and studied social welfare and policy at the University of London.
He founded Cybird in 1998. The company now provides wireless content to users in Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan.
Cybird subscribers have jumped 55 percent to 7.3 million in the past six months.
"Cybird will also chart a new path with branded SIM cards. The brains of any phone on the GSM global mobile-phone standard, SIM cards carry a user's account data and can be swapped from phone to phone," Time said.
Time chose the young executives from more than 100 nominees put forward by its correspondents around the world. Seven of the 15 are Americans. The rest include Eric Kim, marketing chief of South Korea's Samsung Electronics Co., and Strive Masiyiwa, founder of Econnet Wireless of South Africa.
"Each of these up-and-comers has accomplished something this year that transcended borders," the magazine said.