In early 1999, Japan’s top mobile-phone company, NTT DoCoMo, received cheers from customers and analysts alike for introducing its i-mode mobile Internet service. The service, which claims 37 million subscribers and lets them check stock quotes, sports, news and other information over their cell phones, was hailed as the greatest invention in Japan since the Walkman.
Last year, NTT DoCoMo exported the successful i-mode concept overseas. A crucial part of that concept is the much talked-about mobile content and service provider “ecosystem” and – sure enough – Japan’s ecosystem players are following Big D’s path. Today we focus on three smaller players that have found honest-to-goodness cash revenue in Europe due at least in part to their Japan antecedents. Ironically, none are working with any of the baby i-modes over there, showing you don’t need DoCoMo to do what DoCoMo does – anywhere.
Access D2 Communication’s 2003 Picture and Text ad rates guide (in Japanese only). D2C is a JV between – You guessed it! – DoCoMo and Dentsu.
DoCoMo’s N504iS can serve as a remote controller for your TV via the handset’s IR port; it can also be used to scan and then access a printed URL. Access URLs below for pics.
http://k-tai.impress.co.jp/cda/article/news_toppage/11750.html
http://k-tai.impress.co.jp/cda/static/image/2002/11/20/n504is012s.jpg
http://k-tai.impress.co.jp/cda/parts/image_for_link/37053-11750-6-2.html
Morinaga is a great example of the content providers that organize their offerings into more sophisticated “mini platforms” that support sales, marketing, and promotion campaigns for off-line products. In other words, they provide mobile content (images, ring tones, etc.) as part of an overall marketing effort (either for themselves or for clients) – usually combined with PC Web or non-electronic channels.
A man has been arrested after he used tear gas in a futile attempt to escape from a Tokyo video store where he had been caught filming up a woman’s skirt, police said Saturday. Police said that the man used his camera-equipped mobile phone to film up the skirt of a 20-year-old woman who was browsing through videos and CDs in the shop.
