M. David wrote:
> I think what everyone is forgetting is that Docomo had 70% of the mobile
> market share prior to i-mode. There success has been turning that into 80%
> of the mobile internet market. Is that really business model and
technology,
> or the turnover of many of their existing customers into i-mode users?
>
> I would say that their success in Japan has been a first comer, name brand
> advantage with a huge marketing budget. Business model is second, in that
> they quickly got good content for the service (official content-
> specifically of interest to the Japanese market -hello kitty etc.), and a
> lagging third is the technology, which most i-mode users have no idea or
> care about. This is proven by the 75% of traffic that goes through the
> official sites.
>
I get your point about having a headstart and dominant positioning, but as
far as facts and numbers go, DoCoMo only had something like 43% of the
mobile market before i-mode (end of Jan 1999), not counting PHS. It now has
more like 58% of the J. mobile market, 65% share of J. mobile internet, and
the most recent and authoritative hearsay about the split between official
sites is more like 55/45 in favor of the DoCoMo portal.
As for smart marketing, J-phone has more than doubled its subscriber base in
the last 3 months.
We published some fresh numbers at
http://anima.editthispage.com/stories/storyReader$539
-Giles
Received on Tue Aug 15 15:28:47 2000