Andrea:
I largely agree with what you write. However, I have some points
to add:
Andrea wrote:
>
> There are two different things here, the walled garden and the billing
> system.
Actually, there is at least a third and a fourth thing here:
(3) for many companies the imode service is not the main business but
additional to other services, e.g. railways, airlines, hotels, banks etc.
These companies do not need an official site, and many do good
imode business without a non-official site.
(4) corporate use, corporate intranets for delivery services for example.
These also do not need the official menu at all.
> It is definitely good (for many reasons) that there IS a walled garden
> for selected high quality content. For the consumers, for the operator
> AND for the content providers, who were sucessful to get into the
> portal. It is (against rumors) not AS difficult as Bin Laden getting
> into Heaven.
I agree. But it's certainly a major business project to set-up a business
for an official site. We have many companies approaching us on this,
and often there are misunderstandings among foreign companies, what it
takes to set up an imode business in Japan.
> The billing system, well, that in my opinion could and should be offered
> to unofficial content providers as well. As far as I know, this will
> happen in the (near) future in Japan.
There are already now many billing systems on imode outside the official
menu. A large volume of transactions on imode take place outside the
official DoCoMo menu.
Gerhard Fasol
http://www.eurotechnology.com/
Received on Sat Dec 22 05:17:49 2001