On 2 Nov 2003 at 0:51, Gerhard Fasol wrote:
> Bill,
>
> where do you get this idea from that Japanese people were deprived
> of the internet? Internet penetration and usage rates in Japan are
> as high or even higher than in Europe. It's totally untrue that
> in Japan there was no or little internet usage at the introduction
> of i-mode. It's one of the fantasies circulating in Europe among
> people who don't know much about Japan's realities.
>
I must admit I was always under the impression that at the time of i-mode's
introduction Japan did not have a large web surfing population - I finally managed to
track down where I got that impression.
To quote an article by Frank Rose in Wired Sept. 2001 called Pocket Monster:
page 128 "The accepted wisdom about i-mode is that it works in Japan because the
Japanese are pushovers for cute little gadgets like cell phones, because their
homes are too cramped for American-style desk-hog computers, because few of
them know what the Internet is anyway, and because i-mode is a proprietary service
that's designed specifically for Japanese users."
and then at page 131 "It's impossible to know whether i-mode would have
succeeded so dramatically if the Japanese had already been surfing the Web on
home computers - but not many Europeans have home Internet access either, and
they certainly didn't jump on the WAP wagon."
Note that this is specifically referring to the period Feb. 1999 - Feb. 2000.
Steve Oldmeadow
Received on Tue Nov 4 05:14:01 2003