Jan:
Jan Michael Hess wrote:
>
> Dear keitai-lovers.
>
> I would like to get your comments/experience on 2 issues:
>
> 1. import of wireless applications to Japan
>
> As mobilemediajapan.com point out, there are 50.3 million mobile
> net subscribers in Japan which makes it by far the most interesting
> market for mobile premium or advertising-financed applications.
Yes - of course many European and US hardware and software companies
realize this.
> Knowing that many of you on this list are not of Japanese origin
> but live in Japan with many contacts to Europe etc. my request is
> not new - I imagine many of you have all thought about it ...
> Still, I would like to learn about your experience of helping
> import wireless applications developed outside of Japan
> (Scandinavia, rest of Europe, US) to Japan and how easy it is
> to negotiate revenue sharing/official partner deals with
> NTTdocomo/J-phone/KDDI.
We work with a lot of hardware and software companies from US and
Europe going into Japan's mobile markets.
The difficulty to obtain an official partnership relationship
depends a lot on the circumstances and has little to do with
the size of the company in principle. There are some large
foreign companies which took a year or longer to reach official
partnerships with DoCoMo.
Foreign companies need to understand that DoCoMo and the other
carriers are really very strong in Japan, and there is not much
room for negotiations.
Also DoCoMo has at this moment in time about 2000 content partners,
so a European company planning to be a content partner will be
content partner No. 2001, competiting with all others. Therefore
the content really has to be totally compelling to Japanese
users, and for this the European content must have a deep understanding
of Japanese users and do good market research, if they don't want
to loose a lot of money.
> In this context, what are the
> revenue shares given to content providers by J-phone and KDDI?.
The revenue shares are 9%-12% of the content of the monthly
subscription fee only - not of the data transmission charge.
> Or are European or US players really just a niche market in Japan
> because they are slow in exporting cool applications to Japan.
> E.g. take a look at www.gate5.de from Berlin to see what type
> of sophistication I am referring to that might be successful in Japan.
European and US players are a niche market in anything in Japan,
not only in the wireless internet area with a few exceptions.
Foreign investment in Japan is less then 1% which is much much
lower than in most European countries.
> 2. export wireless applications from Japan to Europe
>
> For application developers - again many of you are - the coming
> 12 months in the European mobile economy might be very interesting.
> Waiting for it for a long time and dreaming about what is daily
> practice in Japan, we will finally have significant penetration
> of GPRS/Java/Colour devices. Operators in Europe are looking for
> successful premium applications. So except for fast movers like cybird and imahima
> I did not see many Japanese application developers pushing into Europe.
> Why is that so? Who of you plans to or does export your success/experience/know-how
> to Europe? Do you find it easy to make deals with European operators?
> Whom do you work with to accelerate the process?
There are more than Cybird and Imahima. Don't forget that ImaHima is
founded by a CEO of Indian origin, and has foreign investors.
Cybird's CEO is born in the US.
> The background of 1. and 2. is that we are contemplating right now
> to push companies and applications in both directions. As we are based
> here in Germany (number 1 market of Europe) and partner with players
> in other big markets (UK, Italy, Spain, France), we are open to discussing
> 1. and 2. in detail off the list.
Gerhard Fasol
http://www.eurotechnology.com/
Received on Mon Mar 25 06:18:06 2002