Having quite a bit of experience with this going back to a similar app
we built for Taiwan (CHU) in the 2004 Olympics --
1) Please remember more than 65% of China mobile users are pre-pay. This
mean that the likelihood of them (at least unsubsidized) using WAP is
going to be very slim. The visitors will likely be roaming and packet
fees will be expensive. (Softbank clocks in at about 2Yen/kb) Other
guests will probably just buy a local SIM (prepay). Since that's
challenging enough for most people, they probably won't be buying the
associated Mountarnet access cards (in my opinion), for WAP prepay.
2) Many of the SP's and regional carriers have already planned and
rolled out Olympics related WAP sites. These are heavily promoted by the
SP and the regional carriers. So, you need to compete to them. This
includes special sites for nearly any language user.
3) If you have some media or contents that are especially unique and
compelling, then your best bet is to partner with a Chinese SP to
co-promote and deploy your proposed contents. They'll definitely have an
appropriate platform - and since they are 'official' will also be able
to technically deliver within the guidelines of the government and the
carrier.
4) On the plus side, if you use a simple MIDP1.0/2.0 app - you will
cover alot of the handsets in China. But you'll cover basically nothing
on China Unicom. Their variant of Java is not well distributed and they
have a nearly 100% Brew initiative. And you basically are out of time to
get something like that built, UBT and deployed by CHU. But if you are
building these for visiting users, than its a different ballgame.
7) Best way is a lightweight mobile web site and also SMS alerts based
on user pre-selection. Again, unless you are partnered with an official
SP - you won't be able to detect handset user-agent, so you need to
deliver the site basically 'blind'. But this isn't too bad - mainly
because the likelihood of any user accessing WAP site will be they are
using a pretty good phone, especially if its a visiting user - they'll
likely have a newer handset with decent browser. BTW - both China Mobile
and China Unicom WAP gateway will support mobile XHTML - so if you build
a simple and standard mobile XHTML site - it will work fine. Fonts may
or not work depending on the handset browser and how you encode.
8) As Curt said, Flash, especially server generated, would technically
be very good. Only, not many handsets would be supporting it -
especially the visitor handsets, unless they are coming strictly from
Japan or Korea. And again, you'd be against the roaming packet charges
issue.
Joe Bowbeer wrote:
> On Nov 21, 2007 6:25 PM, Robert Ness wrote:
>
>> We are a media firm in China, and we are developing a platform for
>> delivering Olympics-related information during the Beijing Olympics. I
>> would like the ask the Keitai-L community which delivery format you would
>> prefer--java app or WAP? Given your preference as experts on the technical
>> end of the industry, what do you then think would be the best delivery
>> method for the international market, especially for those who will be in
>> China using China's networks?
>>
>>
>
> I recommend you look at the cross-platform solution developed by my
> former employer, Square Enix subsidiary UIEvolution.
>
> For a list of compatible handsets and carriers in China:
>
> http://www.uievolution.com/products/device_list.php
>
> Check out the UIs of the ESPN MVP and MySpace Mobile apps:
>
> http://www.uievolution.com/solutions/customer/ESPN-MVP-Delivers-Real-Time-Sports-Updates-to-Wireless-Fans
> http://www.uievolution.com/solutions/customer/MySpace-Mobile
>
> Also, have you ruled out Flash Lite?
>
> --
> Joe Bowbeer
>
> This mail was sent to address tim@freeverse.jp
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>
>
>
>
Received on Sat Nov 24 14:57:00 2007