It was a great thrill, honour and my pleasure, to address delegates gathered for the 3rd Annual Mobile Marketing Conference in Manila on Oct. 25th. The IMMAP organizing team did an awesome job – loved the movie theater venue in Rockwell Power Plant – with a solid (ahem) Speakers lineup and fully packed 2-day Agenda, plenty of discovery opportunities.
A quick post to set the record straight. All too many times we have heard the urban legend that goes something along the lines that SoftBank brought the iPhone to Japan and that move directly translated into winning the so-called monthly net addition subscriber wars. However, the actual results – using official numbers from the TCA – paints a rather different picture.
It’s Official: Tokyo will host the 2020 Summer Olympic Games! Clearly it will be an interesting road ahead over the next 2,510 days and, of course, that “Discover Tomorrow” campaign tagline resonates with our longtime efforts in Japan as well. While it’s a warm and sunny Sunday afternoon here in the western suburbs, with local matsuri taiko drums and yokobue flutes in the air, I just wanted to mark this historic day with a few quick thoughts…
DoCoMo is always an interesting player to watch, and not just by comparison within our domestic market. Recently they made a clear ‘Mid-Term Vision’ statement shifting focus towards a so-called ‘Lifestyle Services’ company. Fair guess at first-blush on this for most folks overseas would be somewhere between ‘sure, nice PR speak’ and ‘good luck with that’ based on experience with their own local telcos. However, for those who have paid attention, again not just in Japan, the increasing action in OTT (as noted *importantly* below) and the 4th Wave concept are well upon us here.
This is not my direct turf per se, but thought perhaps it’s about time to make a few points with respect to the on-going spectrum soap opera back home (disclaimer: I AM Canadian too). Simply put; a major amount of chatter related to their upcoming auction of 700MHz and continued efforts by the Fed. to attract foreign investment in order to disrupt the current cozy strangle-hold by three well-established domestic players.
While rumours of this news were circulating a few weeks ago, so we’re not that surprised, maybe folks missed these other hints with regards to forecasting this ever evolving market. As usual overseas press, who could barely contain their delight, didn’t bother to pay much attention in an effort to provide a balanced opinion.
