(keitai-l) Re: grass greener

haven't spoken up in a while, but here's my take.....

I don't think its as simple as "getting it" or not.  I agree that there are
sooo many cultural reasons why imode and jphone etc have been such a hit
here.  I think consumers are only getting happier with the service offerings
(though these iAppli's might turn out to be a bit to pricey IMO)......I
certainly don't expect a consumer backlash.  No way.  its a great service
and will continue to be very popular.

At the same time, I think there's probably too much exuberance in this whole
TENS OF MILLIONS thing.  Bottomline is that opportunities for serious
wireless business, especially B2C are going to be difficult when considering
any business model outside of DoCoMo's.  This is due again to other
Japan-specific factors (ones which are less frequently discussed) as well as
some economic issues when considering greater Asia.  Take Japan, the banking
system is sooooo screwed up here.  As a result, there is much, much less
credit card usage, there's even much fewer people with basic checking
accounts........ and that's got to mean a more difficult time for online
commerce when considering anything but mirco-purchases that can be applied
to the phone bill.  Maybe a way to succesfully use the convience stores will
begin to take over time though, who knows. 

I think the new Accenture adds stating Chinese as the dominate web language
in 2007 are fantastic......but I've been to Shanghai and marveled mobile
penetration there, but how can you expect a massive B2C market without an
economy to back it up?    All I'm saying is that TENS OF MILLIONS of people
with mobile phones checking email may be fantastic but that applying those
numbers and comming up with a kickass business model where people each pay
JPY 6000 a month for wireless access and value added services is not as easy
as the TENS OF MILLIONS makes it sound.  The backlash may simply be in the
market expectations rather than consumer expectations..

- p


Pete Saladino
Scient: Innovate - For What's Next.・
email: psaladino@scient.com
mobile: +81 90.7710.2215
visit us:  http://www.scient.co.jp



-----Original Message-----
From: Renfield Kuroda [mailto:Renfield.Kuroda@msdw.com]
Sent: Friday, February 09, 2001 5:47 PM
To: keitai-l@appelsiini.net
Subject: (keitai-l) Re: grass greener


I think you have missed the point. Even if you take as totally true the
recent
reports that user numbers are inflated, there are still TENS OF MILLIONS of
people using their cellphones for email and data, and growing by over 50,000
a
day.

The future of the Internet is not the PC, it's wireless. This is the third
phase
of the Net:
1 - The Beginning (ArpaNet, etc)
2 - Even my mom uses the net (AOL, Yahoo!,etc)
3 - Everyone in the world on the Net (fixed wireless across Africa, half a
billion Chinese with cellphones, etc.)

r e n


James Governor wrote:

> but it's not really is it? the graphics are sweet. emoji hits a hotbutton.
> but there is a long way to go in terms of navigation and transaction
> security and so on. its apparent, according to this list, that many
> so-counted DoCoMo users (however many tens of millions it is this week)
are
> just people that have bought keitai and pay the few yen a month for the
> service whether they use it or not.
>
> i wonder whether we might see a DoCoMo 'backlash' soon. Or have I missed
the
> point?
>
> [ Did you check the archives?   http://www.appelsiini.net/keitai-l/ ]


[ Did you check the archives?   http://www.appelsiini.net/keitai-l/ ]

[ Did you check the archives?   http://www.appelsiini.net/keitai-l/ ]