Hi Jan, I recognize that Japanese use i-mode and otherwise browse the
web with their phones. On the other hand I suppose that the amount of
"information" that they get through their phones is far less than what a
user of the internet in the US or Europe gets. Of course it is hard to
quantify but I think it fairly clear. I would feel really limited if I
had to use a mobile phone to get information that I can and do get on a
PC. This was however the predicament of the Japanese when i-mode was
introduced and it was all they really had access to and for that reason
I feel that it took off. It took a well developed service (the internet)
and offered it (albeit in a very watered down version) to an audience
which was previously deprived of any part of it (not literally but
effectively deprived). Like to someone who is hungry even a lousy meal
will taste delicious. So from that point of view, i-mode is not
particularly portable to somewhere where the food is already delicious.
Of course there have been embellishments and with so much attention,
energy, and work devoted to it in Japan it is bound to have some aspects
which will be of interest outside of Japan. Such things as the Felica
system merging with a handset for instance. However, I don't think the
i-mode menu is something that should really take off in places where the
internet is popular. On the other hand there is clearly convergence
occurring in various ways. For example, smart phones or KDDI's flat rate
high speed browsing. Once that happens and if the phones are capable of
downloading a reasonably high percent of pages available on the net,
then phone, PDA, and PCs will basically have merged. One problem with my
discussion is that I am not really sure how i-mode is defined. I am
taking it as the i-menu. By the way, I noticed that you are in Germany
(I think). Is it true that in Europe people have been sending email on
there phones for years? Anyway, thanks for reading my rambling. I am
afraid that I am a latecomer and that these arguments have all been
parsed out.
Bill Claster, Tokyo.
-----Original Message-----
From: keitai-l-bounce@appelsiini.net
[mailto:keitai-l-bounce@appelsiini.net] On Behalf Of Jan Michael Hess
Sent: Saturday, November 01, 2003 10:42 PM
To: keitai-l@appelsiini.net
Subject: (keitai-l) AW: port of i-mode to other cultures
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.
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Received on Sat Nov 1 16:26:18 2003