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We pulled together this overview of our 2012 Mobile Monday Tokyo activities and now "Really" looking forward to next year, it's already shaping up to be The.Best.Evar! Many Thanks to All who make this on-going effort, now 8-years running, a fun and most worthwhile project = Bringing the Community Together.. Smile.. It's Monday!

This article via NYT “As Boom Lures App Creators, Tough Part Is Making a Living” made the rounds and while it’s clearly focused on the US market.. it’s obviously a global issue. We have mentioned several times over the past few years, both in private and public, the business model deployed by Apple and Google for their App platforms was missing a key Japanese ingredient – recurring and sustainable revenue for developers. For starters; it should come as no surprise by now – despite most initial “huh” remarks when we’ve pointed out back in 2008, that the original platform model for this industry is actually imode 1999. The images below have been a standard insert on our deck and should address any initial ‘confusion’, the so-called benevolent dictator on top of the pyramid clearly need not be a DoCoMo styled telco in order to manage the value-chain. imode ecosystem Apple ecosystem That said.. there are two key differences

Well.. it’s not like we woke-up on the wrong side of the futon.. but srsly..?!? Those who have followed us over the years know we’re not generally shy to wave a pointed stick when duty calls.. and there have been a few lately. Surely Sharp has more important things to do, all considered, these days. While it’s likely geeky cool Google juice for tech sites overseas that delight in the bizarre Japan meme, and Panasonic has been spending heavy in the Smart APPliance space as well, somehow remote controlling the vacuum only appeals about as far as chasing miss kitty around the house while we’re stuck on the train in crush-hour. Also landing in our impromptu kangaroo court is none other than DoCoMo with this painfully awkward attempt to seem chick-cool, apologies to the clearly talented and energetic ‘producers’ this is not aimed at you. Choosing the trendy Harajuku location, where both KDDI and Softbank have significant investments, was logical and even

While we have many people to catch-up with in both KL and Singapore next week, and really looking forward, the annual Digital Media Asia conference is our main focus. The entire industry clearly is, and has been, going through incredible times this last decade or so and it’s always an exciting opportunity to connect with key players in this space. Even though we have presented for WAN-IFRA delegates many times, both here and abroad, over the years on Mobile in Tokyo, somehow this one just feels.. special. In fact to celebrate the occasion we even made a New Deck, while the old standard prezzi is decent, and fairly confident our latest version doesn’t suck. Perhaps, after the show, will have upload available online to share with all. As for the many meetings ontap there, lets just say that 2013 is shaping up and we are pumped as always with projects in the pipeline. If you happen to be in the region, and our schedules click, happy to hook-up for a few as possible. Sorakan!

Ever since the first rumor broke, with talks quickly confirmed and ‘definitive deal’ announced soon after, the bat-phone here has been ringing for comments. Now that everyone has had time to digest, plenty of noise – as usual, we’ll toss our 1.5yen worth of unique perspective. The Largest Foreign Acquisition Deal by a Japanese Company Ever! Yes, the Mighty Yen: It’s been noted here several times over the last few years, with other examples in 2012 – Dentsu also bought Aegis for example – of Japan Inc. making $Billion deals, look at the exchange rates. We’ve seen many comments about the fiscal sense of $20Bn; expect SB and partners have done their diligence, considering what they paid per subscriber, it surely made economic risk sense to the bean-counters for them to sign-off. Can SoftBank Repeat a Stunning #3 Turn Around Again There – How? Indeed, the central question that had tongues waggin from the get-go.. certainly it’s p

Suppose this will likely sound a bit ‘odd’ to many of you out there, in a fog of PDA designs and hyper-data consumption, but here’s a friendly heads-up from the future. As most markets have rushed towards this space, some tipping into the 50% adoption range, we are starting to see a gentle push-back here. While the typical Japanese so-called feature-phone is not your usual beast, pre-installed Flash since 2003 along with touch & swipe screens, Digital TV and NFC.. all old news, there were a couple of ‘Aha’ moments recently that led to this blurb. In the spring of this year DoCoMo introduced their new line-up without a single clamshell design.. wow, it was like the death of i-mode and nobody even bothered to mention. However, their latest round of 16 units included Four new flip models.. we asked vendors on the street, who basically said: “so many customers don’t want a Smartphone”. When pressed for ‘why’ that might be, a

It’s been far.too.long for us to post here like this, suggest grabba cuppa sumthing to review below, trusting our update will be worth your while. These last 18-months, or so, since 3.11 quake has been a difficult experience – that said – it appears a so-called ‘new normal’ has settled and we have plenty of catching-up to do. For the time being, just wanted to cover a few key points and make clear it’s time to ease back into the regular cycle of posting here. By now, for those who may not have already noticed, it must be obvious we have a new site layout that should render nicely across all device screens. Still expecting to work through a few bugs, but happy to finally move into these new digital digs; the 4th of our refits this year, starting at the Mobikyo site along with overhauls on our MoMo Tokyo and Mobile Intelligence properties. There is plenty of debate Responsive vs. Native topic, tossing in hybrid middle ground, we went with this solutio