On Fri, 7 Sep 2001 turner@uvs.is wrote:
> My motivation for the Japan.Inc post was an attempt to discover the larger
> importance of the i-mode phenomenon. Specifically does the business
> ecosystem DoCoMo created work beyond the shores of the island of Japan. I
> do not believe it does, and thus i-mode will remain a purely Japanese
> phenomenon.
Well, I think that that conclusion may be a bit hasty.
From my own observations, and what I've heard here, there seem to be two
main, and separate, drivers of i-mode usage: e-mail and amusement sites.
Well, e-mail certainly has the potential of taking off. We already know
that SMS is by far the most popular data application on phones in Europe
right now: the only question that remains is whether the advantages of
i-mode e-mail (proper From: and Subject: lines, bigger messages, direct
interoperability with Internet e-mail, and an easier-to-use interface on
the i-mode phones) will be enough to swing people over from SMS. It would
(and did!) convert me in a flash, but, not being a typical consumer,
I'm not bold enough to extend that to general prediciton. But it's not
out of the question that it grow as quickly as SMS did.
Amusement sites are a bit more difficult, for a couple of reasons. First,
we've got very little experience of that in Europe and the US. You hear
about SMS amusement-related things, but they're few and far between (and
certainly don't offer an experience anything like i-mode); WAP is not
much better and has never had enough people with access to it. Second,
the amusement sites (at least, the successful ones) are inevitably going
to be quite different for the usual cultural reasons. (I just can't see
American girls asking boys their blood types and punching these into
their phones to see if they'd make good boyfriends....)
As for the Scuka piece, I wouldn't call it an entirely accurate
assessment:
> > To start, the carriers control the complete service envelope, from
> > the handsets and the billing plans to the service providers and the
> > content on the tiny screen.
Well, no. They don't really control the content on the screen. They
control what you get when you pick the i-mode menu, but you're not even
obligated to start there. You can start with any bookmark you have,
or URL you care to type in. It's not even as forceful as the default
start page on a PC web browser just after it's installed.
Yes, they do control the billing for the official sites, but considering
that official sites have no parallel in the desktop web world, and that
that consolidated billing system Just Doesn't Exist, I don't see why
having one company control this one should be so weird.
Certainly it makes sense that, if a company has an authentication and
billing system in place, they should sell it to others. And this does
happen with other telephone systems: in the US the phone company bills
you for your 900-number calls, and passes part of the proceeds on to
the vendor.
> > It would be as if a
> > single corporate brand name (Microsoft? AOL? Intel?) would:
> >
> > ** Sell you your PC
> > ** Set the technical and commercial standards for the monitor, video
> > card, hard disk, sound card, and all other hardware, with only some
> > of these standards being made public
> > ** Create and sell the operating system, applications, browser, mail,
> > and entertainment software (like Winamp or RealPlayer)
> > ** Provide your ISP account, your mail account, and all of the Web
> > services that you use
We are not nearly so far from that as you think.
Microsoft is directly responsible for much of the general design of PC
hardware configurations: they publish documents stating what they want
to see in PCs, and what they will support, and the PC makers adhere to
those. Even Intel bows down: since Windows XP will not be supporting
Intel's USB 2.0 in the initial release, Intel is busy embracing the
competing IEEE 1394 standard (with some rather amusing fancy dancing
around the whole issue, too).
All the major PC manfacturers are each right in line with Microsoft
policy almost to the point of the two being a single vendor: you've
never seen (and probably never will see) a dual-boot machine from any
of these vendors. (Admittedly, the PC manufacturers are not entirely
pleased about a lot of this sort of thing, but Microsoft has them bent
right over the sofa, so they're not going to complain publically about
this embarassing situation.)
Microsoft essentially does supply all of the operating systems, browsers
and office applications, and is getting there in the e-mail and streaming
media departments. They're certainly pushing hard for that. The one
major exception is AOL, which is also pushing hard for the same thing,
and exerts Docomo-like control and influence in the web/e-mail access
department.
> > ** Serve as gatekeeper for the kind of content and services that the
> > sites offer
> > ** Control a large number of the Web sites that you regularly visit
Simply not true. They control one portal that you are no more forced
to use than you are forced to use Yahoo. And same for the "websites you
regularly visit": if I chose to stick mostly to Yahoo websites for all
the things I like to do, Yahoo has that same control when I'm using my
desktop machine.
> > ** Send you a single, unified bill each month for your usage of the
> > service and your access to some of the Web sites
> > ** Know precisely which Web sites you visit, how long you spend
> > online, and how much and to whom you send mail
And these are is different from AOL how?
> > While the Internet may as yet be an emerging phenomenon, we think
> > it's safe to conclude that if any single corporate entity ever tried
> > to wield this degree of control over netizens' wireline surfing
> > experience, there'd be shooting in the streets (at least in countries
> > that have Second Amendments).
I'm not sure what this Second Amendment thing is, but I take it that
the country "America" referred to in the company name "America On Line"
does not have such a thing?
> Further, European mobile operators... appear to be
> greedy SOBs who have no intention of (and no supporting billing
> infrastructure for) sharing revenue with content providers.
Well, they're absolute morons, then. Who on earth could sensibly prefer to
be a department store credit card when they could be MasterCard or Visa?
cjs
--
Curt Sampson <cjs_at_cynic.net> +81 3 5778 0123 http://www.netbsd.org
Don't you know, in this new Dark Age, we're all light. --XTC
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Received on Sat Sep 8 10:17:20 2001