Brent Bossom wrote:
> Ren wrote:
>
> > DoCoMo adopted cHTML because it met the needs of contents creators.
>
> I am not trying to get into an argument over this, but Ren you've written it
> quite a bit and I'm just wondering what the source of this information is.
> Discussions you've had with them? Stuff you've read? The thing that I find
> strange is that at the beginning, when DoCoMo were planning this service,
> there were no "content creators" for any mobile services. And the companies
> they were getting to put up content were banks and such, and I would have
> thought that with all the larger technical issues involved, such as
> security, the issue of whether the mark-up language was simple cHTML or WML
> would have been relatively minor. Or were DoCoMo really looking that far
> forward with expectations of all the "katte" site developers getting on the
> bandwagon? I somehow doubt this. Today, of course, we can see how successful
> the service is, but back when it was being planned it could not have been
> such a certainty.
>
I heard from Cybird, who've been involved with i-mode from the beginning, as
well as banks, as banks were a very important first contents provider for
i-mode. At that time (almost 2 years ago), Japanese banks (and other contents
providers like popular magazines) were just starting to come online. They had
invested alot of time, money, and effort into the web/HTML the previous years
and wanted to reuse as much as possible. They did NOT want to have to reinvest
in learning and using the alternative, WAP, which was a whole new set of
protocols and at that time totally untested.
>
> Is it possible that NTT DoCoMo went with Access' proposal because it was a
> domestic one (I know I'm on dangerous ground here, but when has NTT used
> anything that was from the outside?? PDC is a case in point. The whole world
> uses GSM and Japan is the only one with PDC and PHS.) And my understanding
> is that Access Japan's proposal to the W3C was the first ever to come from
> Japan. (Probably not relevant).
>
Absolutely. I was reminded just last week that DoCoMo is a DOMESTIC operator
with 60 million Japanese customers, and they are interested in serving those
customers as best they can. That meant and means local contents, local contents
providers, local solutions.
That being said, Access may be a local firm, but their engineering is world
reknowned; their NetFront browser is one of if not the most popular non-PC
browser.
r e n
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morgan stanley dean witter japan
e-business technologies | engineering and strategy
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Received on Wed Aug 16 14:05:44 2000