hi "wbc@tkk.att.ne.jp" (unfortunately we don't know your name),
even if you don't like browsing and emailing on your keitai,
there are more than 40 million Japanese with i-mode enabled
phones and about 90% are using them according to Yusuke Kanda,
President of DoCoMo i-mode Europe, who just spoke at our
Mobile Kaizen Seminar in Stuttgart.
i-mode is a complete mobile Internet service offering with around
3.800 official content providers on their i-mode menu and
over 67.000 unofficial content providers in the unofficial market
that is indexed by independent search engines.
DoCoMo has deals with 6 MNO partners in Europe that have about
50 million subscribers. Today, less than 1 million of them have
i-mode powered mobile phones. But DoCoMo believes that new handsets
in 2004 that finally reach the necessary quality as well as more
Marketing power from i-mode licensees in their respective market will
help make i-mode a success outside of Japan, too. DoCoMo has a lot
of know-how and will clearly help its partners to succeed, although
this process takes a lot more time than we all expected.
When you look closer at the Japanese market, you can see that
KDDI and J-Phone (now Vodafone) copied the i-mode business model
(not all its technology decisions) almost 100%. Outside of Japan
Vodafone has adopted the i-mode model, too, (though giving less
money to its content partners). Most important, Vodafone now
specifies handsets as handsets are the important user interface.
Finally, Daniel Scuka and me believe that it is all about
the management culture, not the end user culture. Anybody can
learn from i-mode, adopt it, improve it etc. That's why we
run a seminar called "Mobile Kaizen" showing how we can
offer better products and services while increasing profits by
implementing continuous improvements in the Mobile Economy Triangle
of networks, devices, and services. So far all our participants
have agreed that they have learned a lot from our 1-day wireless
Japan peep show and that they will look into improving their role
in the Triangle.
Best, Jan.
--------------------
www.mobileeconomy.de
www.mobiliser.org
> I would like to hear what other members feel about the so-called
> porting of i-mode. I suppose this may be an outdated discussion
> but would anyone be willing to comment on the ideas below.
> What is it that is the so-called success of i-mode that could be
> exported. I have read that it is a service not a technology. The
> browsing on i-mode is limited to the point of being useless.
> Email is not new. Signing up for services will not catch on very
> well because most services are free on the net and it is only in
> Japan where the net offerings are so limited and where computer
> usage has been very limited relatively speaking that i-mode could
> catch on and where people were willing to pay for services that
> are offered for free elsewhere (don't know how long they will be
> offered for free but the are at the moment).
> Games and Java apps are different from the above discussion. An
> application can sell on a phone as well as on a pc.
> Anyway, does anyone have any comments?
> Thanks.
Received on Sat Nov 1 15:40:37 2003