Nihon Kotsu as the "Prince of Taxis." The company was founded as a sole proprietorship in 1928 and reorganized as a stock company in December 1945. It began as a limousine operator and expanded to taxi service in 1940. NK operates the most popular taxi hailing mobile application in Japan, Japan Taxi. Toyota invested 500 million yen in the app in 2017, followed by a second 7.5 billion investment in 2018. Tokyo Musen, a major rival of Nihon Kotsu in the Tokyo area, joined the app later that year in an effort to counterbalance foreign rivals such as Uber and Didi Chuxing.
Smartphone a stylus, keyboard, or keypad typical for smartphones at the time, in favor of a capacitive touchscreen for direct finger input as its only input type. The iPhone was "not a smartphone by conventional terms, being that a smartphone is a platform device that allows software to be installed," until the opening of Apple's App Store a year later, which became a common means for smartphone software distribution and installation. The first iPhone also faced criticism for not supporting the latest 3G wireless network standards, but was praised for its hardware and software design, and its June 2007 release was