Thank-you Robb for the insight, it is much appreciated, as with all comment on
this subject.
I just want to clarify that there was no intention to even slightly insinuate
that the i-mode platform was not worth developing for. On the contrary, I think
i-mode is a phenomenal success that proves among many things, that it is
sometimes better to have control of the whole process, develop a product and
push it to commercialization, without having to worry about issues such as
interoperability (like WAP), standards and so forth. The fact that DoCoMo has
made it easy, at least for official sites, to get pay for content on i-mode is a
incredible achievement in itself considering the long-standing problems with
micro-payments on the Internet.
The whole point of the article was to illustrate that there are content
providers that do fail (again very loose definition) with i-mode, which no one
else in the media has ever bother to mention or even consider in most articles.
I admit I might have taken a drastic short cut in not having research the piece
thoroughly enough for most readers on this list. There was certainly no ill
intention on my part to make i-mode, or anyone in particular, look bad with the
article. As many of you might have noticed, the intention was more to entertain
than to criticize (hope at least some of you found it funny)
But as a reporter who talks to WAP (not i-mode) developers quite often, it is
hard not to notice that there is so far, no proven business model for WAP, which
basically means no proven wireless content provider business model outside Japan
and Korea. You cannot imagine how many times I've gotten the answer "yes, the
wireless Internet (or one particular wireless Internet service) has huge
potential, just look at i-mode in Japan," whenever I asked a question like, how
confident are you in making money from your service? or simply, what is your
business model?
The article was targeted at these people, who seem to get away with pulling out
i-mode's success as the answer to everything, regardless of technology, service
type, or market conditions.
As I wrote earlier, the column ends with a question mark. I can think of several
ways to refute the question: wireless advertising, sponsorships (Natasha's rant
on one particular topic might be worth someone paying for. Imagine a complaint
on the hot weather sponsor by Coco Cola), souvenir mechandises, and so on.
That was the point of the article and I doubt DoCoMo, who I do work with on
occasion, would be offended at the least that I've brought it to attention.
Robb Satterwhite wrote:
> I had a few quibbles with the fact-checking in Tony's article, but I agree
> with him that many of the quibbles are irrelevant - clearly by this stage
> in i-mode's history there have almost certainly been a few failures. Or
> depending on how you define 'failure' (such as "failure to turn a
> significant profit after the first year of operation") there may have been
> many failures, just as there have been on the web as a whole. My main
> problem, though, was with the rather large leap of logic at the end of the
> article - even if many sites fail, there are some sites that are successful
> - it's all part of the shaking-out process to see what kinds of content and
> services make sense on a mobile platform with a tiny screen and what kind
> don't work so well. One could even argue that the i-mode menu is getting
> way too crowded, and a little weeding out of not-so-successful content might
> be a good thing.
>
> I agree that there's been an extraordinary amount of uncritical hype about
> i-mode, but I think this article seems designed to reassure its readers that
> there's nothing at all to the hype, and as such it isn't really a service to
> potential content providers. The lesson to be drawn from the case study
> (had it been accurate) is that i-mode world isn't a magical land where
> everyone makes pots of money - some businesses and some kinds of content
> will work much better than others, just like everywhere else.
>
> [For the record, "Natasha Nakamura's Diary" was a humor column that was
> published in Tokyo Q, which is a city magazine covering music, art,
> restaurants, clubs and other aspects of life in this great city. Tokyo Q
> continues to publish weekly i-mode content as part of the i-Nokia site (and
> also with its own link on the i-mode English menu), with recently expanded
> coverage that includes the Japanese independent rock scene and Tokyo's
> contemporary art galleries.]
>
> [ Did you check the archives? http://www.appelsiini.net/keitai-l/ ]
[ Did you check the archives? http://www.appelsiini.net/keitai-l/ ]
Received on Fri May 11 18:23:33 2001