(keitai-l) Re: AW: port of i-mode to other cultures

Hi Steve, I don't know exactly why I have/had that impression. First of
all, there has got to be less browsing because the amount of information
available in Japanese must be far less than that of English, as English
is somewhat of a universal language. Of course some Japanese will read
English pages but I suppose it is rather limited. Generally, when I ask
people if they use their phones for looking at the web, I get about 20%
at most who say they do. Most people tell me they never do or just to
check the movies or trains. That however is a completely subjective and
non scientific study. On the other-hand I would like to find some study
of how many hours people spend on the web via their PCs and also how
many packets of non personal email are transferred over the web to
keitais in Japan and see how that compares to the US and Europe. It
would be interesting to see that for both now and at start of i-mode.
Jeff Funk says that in May 2001 alone the packet/air time charges on the
mobile Internet was 700 million dollars but I don't know how to break
that figure down nor how to compare that with content available in
English. Need to do a lot more research.
Bill

-----Original Message-----
From: keitai-l-bounce@appelsiini.net
[mailto:keitai-l-bounce@appelsiini.net] On Behalf Of Steve Oldmeadow
Sent: Tuesday, November 04, 2003 12:10 PM
To: keitai-l@appelsiini.net
Subject: (keitai-l) Re: AW: port of i-mode to other cultures

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


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