I saw the same article and it was very interesting. This DoCoMo strategy
might work at start in Europe but it could fade off... In Europe, the
handset vendors have had very strong branding (like Nokia, Ericsson etc) and
people have been used to buy the 'hardware' (which is actually a very small
part of the keitai nowadays) from strong reliable 'brands' and to get the
service from 'whoever' provides the best and the most suitable service. This
has provided the freedom (THANKS TO STANDARDS LIKE GSM) to change the
service if not satisfied. In US and in Japan you will need to change both
the service and the phone if you are not satisfied ... not really very
customer friendly attitude?
Also, the service providers have not been as strong in branding in Europe -
like DoCoMo in Japan - so there might be problems in the future. This can
also be seen as KPN's way of survival.... And it is very clear that DoCoMo's
got the whip like Daniel indicated in this particular case....
There's quite a few service providers in Europe and they will have a hell of
the job if they want to build brands like Nokia. I could see some kind of
hybrid to happen and when the next version of WAP and i-Mode are likely to
'merge' this would give some freedom of the handset vendors from the service
providers. Some standardization on the 'services' (like WAP+i-mode) will
also leave more freedom for the handset vendors...
Pekka Parnanen
Solid. Making your network flow.
PS. laughing in Finnish.... ;-)
-----Original Message-----
From: keitai-l-bounce@appelsiini.net
[mailto:keitai-l-bounce@appelsiini.net]On Behalf Of Daniel Helmer
Sent: Wednesday, August 29, 2001 2:31 AM
To: keitai-l@appelsiini.net
Subject: (keitai-l) Will built-to-order keitai take-off outside Japan?
Now here is an insight into how the Euro i-mode (KPN) will deal with the
handset issue.
http://www.cnn.com/2001/TECH/ptech/08/27/i.mode.handsets.idg/index.html
Make sense really, and I'm sure DoCoMo is holding the whip.
So is this the way forward for the global handset industry? (Well,
built-to-order certainly worked for Dell, to give a PC analogy). I guess the
question is, and this is also mentioned in the article, can handset makers
be profitable this way?
What if Vodafone steps up to Nokia and start flexing its muscles and demands
built-to-order WAP handsets to optimise Vodafone content and services? But
then again, maybe Nokia will flex its even bigger muscles and laugh (in
Finnish, which sounds very intimidating...) An example of the latter, I got
the Director of Mobile Networks of C&W Optus here in Australia on record
saying that they wouldn't even consider launching its GPRS network
commercially until they got the Nokia GPRS phones - because that's all
people will buy.
Cheers,
Daniel Helmer
KPMG Consulting
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Received on Wed Aug 29 07:40:47 2001