This news is a couple days old, but I just noticed that Sony Ericsson and wireless operator DoCoMo will be debuting a "smellphone" (as you might surmise, a cellphone that comes with "scented sheets designed to relax the users while making calls", according to CNET) in Japan. If you've ever been to Japan, you may get why that sort of thing might succeed.

Novelty aside, what's interesting about the smellphone is that it's actually not a Sony, or even a Japanese, innovation. As I wrote last year in FORTUNE, Lenovo -- the Chinese PC-maker that bought IBM's ThinkPad division -- scored a major hit in China's huge cellphone market with its own Perfume Phone. (Hyundai [pictured here] followed in China; Samsung was rumored to be looking into it.) Are Japanese consumers, perhaps the world's most fickle and forward-thinking when it comes to mobile, now taking cues from the Chinese market? That would mark a nice success for China's electronics industry, long relegated to compete simply on price, not design or features. (Too bad for Lenovo they didn't export their idea themselves.) Will we start seeing more Chinese tastes crossover to Japan and Korea, or to the U.S.?

Evidently, someone at Sony must think so. Because Sony BMG and Warner are looking to create the music industry's first straight-to-cellphone download service in China, where they think the mobile market is a potential money spigot. They'll be fighting an uphill battle against piracy.