Last year's position : 27

So he's slipped from 6 to 27 to 37 this year, but don't let that detract from Tachikawa's influence. He remains one of the key figures in mobile, the head honcho at a company that can even dictate terms to some of the largest handset vendors and license proprietary services globally that it's developed itself.

He's taken a knock because of the teething problems with DoCoMo's flavour of 3G but still had the balls to be the first of the major operators to launch it, by some distance. Expect more innovation, demanded by Tachikawa.