Japan Mobile Phone Internet Marketing (Part 2)

Last December, professor Philip Sidel of the International University of Japan served up some nasty lessons for believers in location-based marketing strategies (WWJ video here). Last week, Sidel and professor Glenn E. Mayhew presented their latest findings on mobile Internet (MobileNet) usage in Japan, and have come up with a new set of surprises, some nasty… and some nice. At a lecture at the American Chamber of Commerce Japan’s e-Business forum, the Sidel/ Mayhew team again cut swaths through several layers of hype and slashed up several misconceptions marketers might have. In our recent Viewpoint, we noted how surprised some European consultants were about the lack of business apps in Japan’s MobileNet. Now prepare for some more; data gleaned in their most recent study shows that less than half of Japan’s MobileNet users plug in to keitai Internet for more for more than 5 minutes a day, and, perhaps, only a quarter of users are willing to pay for content and this is just the beginning.