Thinking about this again (and re-reading the article), I think
maybe DoCoMo's blunder was in not handing out keitai's
on a first-come-first-served basis. They made a distinction
between "foreign journalist" and "japanese journalist" that
was counterproductive. If they had not discriminated, western
journalists might have seen Japanese journalists scooping
up phones for the "free call" value alone, and using i-mode
incidentally. This would probably have given the phenomenon
more exposure than restricting the give-away to westerners.
Then again, as someone has already noted, many of these
western journalists are actually posted here in Japan, and
are no stranger to the phenomenon - perhaps they even
have i-mode keitais themselves in many cases.
Michael Turner
www.idiom.com/~turner
leap@gol.com
----- Original Message -----
From: "Andrea Hoffmann" <ah@anima.de>
To: <keitai-l@appelsiini.net>
Sent: Monday, July 24, 2000 10:15 AM
Subject: (keitai-l) Foreign press at G8 rate i-mode a flop?
> Good morning,
>
> here is an interesting piece of information from Nikkei BP
> Biztech about the acceptance of i-mode among the G8 foreign
> press:
>
> Summit Special: Foreign press at G8 rate i-mode a flop?
> http://anima.editthispage.com/stories/storyReader$327
>
> Quote: "Virtually all the foreign press who did borrow the
> specially prepared i-mode phones used them only for free
> phone calls."
>
> Is that bad preparation (the press didn't know enough about
> the phones in advance) or will i-mode be a Japan-only success?
> Or are the journalists simply ignorant?
>
> TTL,
> Andrea
> --
> Andrea Hoffmann -- Editor-in-Chief -- hoffmann@westcyber.com
> Japan Mobile Information ---- http://anima.editthispage.com
>
>
Received on Tue Jul 25 12:06:37 2000