Thanks for these great pieces of advice.
I want to add that we will only be delivering English content, and the
subject matter we will be reporting on will not compete with large
well-resourced media companies (such as those reporting on records, scores),
but rather the foreign community traveling to China as well as China
watchers from abroad, especially those in the journalism and communications
industries.
Basically, these are internet savvy professionals, who are blog readers, and
international fliers. For those who will be in China, who will be a little
more interested in the timeliness of information, we anticipate a demand for
mobile content. Many of these will be people with handsets bought used
abroad but using the local networks during the time of the games. Still, a
fair portion will be locals and expats using their domestic service plans.
Given the sensitive nature of the media industry here, we will not be
providing any Chinese language content, and hence will not be explicitly
targeting locals (though 25% of Danwei.org readers use Chinese web
browsers).
The suggestions the community has given me, do they apply to the market of
users I have described above? Thanks very much,
~Robert
On Nov 24, 2007 8:56 PM, Tim Smith <tim@freeverse.jp> wrote:
> 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
> > Need archives? How to unsubscribe? http://www.appelsiini.net/keitai-l/
> >
> >
> >
> >
>
> This mail was sent to address robertness@gmail.com
> Need archives? How to unsubscribe? http://www.appelsiini.net/keitai-l/
>
>
--
Robert Donald Osazuwa Ness III
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Danwei: www.danwei.org, www.danwei.fm
Skype: robert_ness
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Received on Sun Nov 25 11:36:36 2007