Viewpoint
Viewpoint

Viewpoint

Strategic Planning for Successful International Expansion

Strategic Planning for Successful International ExpansionA long-time friend of WWJ, Walter Adamson, founder and principal at Digital Investor, sat down with us to share his latest presentation, “Strategic Planning for Successful International Expansion: Lessons Learned from Asia’s Failed Experiences,” a primer on the mistakes that mobile content companies have made while trying to expand across borders, with a focus on Japan and Australia. In the Japanese case, some have succeeded, but many others have not and Walter has provided a clear outline of common mistakes.

Walter attributes failure in many cases to unsophisticated management approaches and suggests that a solution can be found from addressing what he calls the ‘Top Six Sins’ — Strategic Intent, Underestimated Risk, Lack of Linkage (between strategy and action), Poor Balance, Poor Project Reviews and Poor Alignment (between strategy and structure). WWJ thinks Walter’s view may just be valuable to mobile companies anywhere considering a leap into someone else’s market.

Bridging the Mobile Gaming Divide

Bridging the Mobile Gaming DivideDespite all the effort WWJ has put into finding and covering software developers that have successfully transitioned out of Japan’s navel-gazing mobile market to markets elsewhere, I must admit we haven’t found thousands. Or even dozens. But one of them is Shinjuku, Tokyo-based G-mode, and this week the Japanese mobile game maker and its Dublin, Ireland-based partner Upstart Games said four IQ-enhancing games, already popular in Japan, would be distributed in the US and Europe via Upstart. The news underscores the profits to be found when forward-thinking mobile players work hard to bridge the wireless culture divide.

Upstart’s CEO Barry O’Neil told WWJ that the company has been planning to launch a brain training game for mobile since the runaway success of the genre in Japan late last year. Ironically, the Irish side was initially skeptical that such a narrow niche could win operator interest in Europe or the US. “We’ve a relationship with G-mode dating back to last year, and their Right Brain Paradise was something we’d looked at in the past, but felt gaining operator support could be difficult. Now that the genre is becoming more widely known we felt the time was right to introduce this mobile series,” he wrote in an email yesterday.

The three-game series, dubbed, “I.Q. Academy” is intended to help get players’ brains in shape by offering games designed to exercise the brain’s right side and improve spatial, visual and cognitive skills in the player. I.Q. Academy is based on G-mode’s hyperpopular ‘Right Brain Paradise’ series, which, according to the company, has sold almost two million downloads. The series is expected to launch in Europe and the US in the coming months (WWJ subscribers log in for full article).

Vodafone Japan's Final Media Briefing: Out with a Whimper

Vodafone Japan’s Final Media Briefing: Out with a WhimperFor Vodafone Japan, the end came not with a bang, but with a whimper. When we arrived at last Monday’s press event – the final one, it turned out, before news of the Japan sell-out hit the Web – the smell of pending doom hung in the air. Ironically, the media briefing bore an optimistic title: the “Future Direction of Product & Service Development.” It was also surprising to see that President Bill Morrow and Chairman Tsuda-san would attend for the 3G roadmap briefing to be given by former J-Phone super-star Ohta-san; WWJ has never seen three Vodafone Big Guys in one room together for a media briefing (perhaps there is safety in numbers)? But when the talk from all three turned out vague and totally avoided any mention of new MVNO’s signing up to resell Vodafone 3G capacity — widely considered to be one of Big Red’s few viable options in Japan — we suspected something was up.

And when we learned that a $49 bn write-off had been announced by London on the same day, it was obvious that the clock had already started ticking down for the carrier’s long-speculated Japan exit. Thus ended, after some five years of trying, what could have been one of the most brilliant tie-ups between a global brand name and world-leading Japanese mobile know-how.

Will it be SanyoKia or Nokia-San?

Will it be SanyoKia or Nokia-San? by Mobikyo KKLast week’s announcement of Nokia and Sanyo joining forces to boost their combined CDMA market share in the US was lost in the next-gen mobile TV hype and media avalanche (not to mention complaints about pokey dial-up access from the venue) coming from the 3GSM World Congress. The Nokia-Sanyo combination is an obvious play with both sides bringing a decent value proposition to the table; Nokia has massive manufacturing capacity, established distribution channels and a global brand while Sanyo has proven experience producing ultra-cool high-tech handsets and strong operator/vendor relationships. The companies gave no financial details of the tie-up, which is expected to close in the second quarter, but the JV will be based in Osaka and San Diego with an estimated 3,500 employees.

The challenge — and rewards — of morphing these respective ‘best of’ brands into a unified product offering are significant. Sanyo has advanced mobile battery and GPS chip expertise that even a Nokia would be hard-pressed to build on their own and such technologies are fast becoming key competitive differentiators as the US (and other markets) mandate emergency location reporting and other public safety services. Sanyo was vaulted to the ranks of top-tier suppliers to national champion DoCoMo last year as the name behind some of Big D’s first GPS-enabled models, the SA800i and SA700iS.

A Nokia-Sanyo tie-up makes sense from an economy of scale perspective and the end result should be better hardware for the end user, potentially at a lower price, which should please the operators and — more to the point — their shareholders.

3G Mobile Future: Exclusive Interview with Tomi Ahonen

3G Mobile Future: Exclusive Interview with Tomi AhonenTomi Ahonen is a smart guy who’s done a lot of observing and thinking about the 3G future. He reports that planet Earth has 2 bn mobile phones, with more phones in use than cars, credit cards or televisions, and that advertisers, businesses and governments are all trying to understand how the mobile future will download. For a glimpse into the future, Tomi was in Tokyo last month for the 3G Mobile World Forum 2006 where he observed that Japan already has the handsets, the networks and users who have migrated to 3G, while “the rest of the world is just starting to understand and discover this opportunity.”

He points out that in Japan, roughly 30 percent of all mobiles are 3G phones, compared to the UK, where it’s only 8 percent. “We have a long way to go to catch up.” WWJ’s Lawrence Cosh-Ishii caught up with Tomi for a tightly-focused interview covering 3G, 3.5G, consumer service definition, key technologies and how marketing and advertising are starting to recognize the potential of mobile.

KDDI's Competitive Edge in Japan

Over the past 12 to 18 months the mobile division of KDDI, known here as ‘au,’ has been leading the way in Japan’s cellular marketplace. During a recent interview at the 3G World Forum, one European visitor asked the seemingly obvious question, “What is the main reason for their success?” KDDI au's Competitive Edge in Japan by Mobikyo KK

The reasonable answer is that it’s actually a combination of several factors, but one thing stands out. Compared to the NTT DoCoMo and Vodafone business models, au has a very tight focus on the domestic market. Their attention to detail in customer service and product offerings is not challenged by how the product mix and content offerings might fit into the company’s global strategy — and it shows. This has allowed au to take the lead in areas like GPS, flat-rate data and faster networks, all provided to the consumer on affordable price plans. The carrier now offers a full suite of popular and useful services ranging from Navitime, EZ auctions, EZ book, EZ channel, EZ games, and EZ FM to (recently introduced) mobile IM (‘Hello Messenger’), mobile blogging (‘DuoBlog’) and Lismo.

Looking again at au’s recent blitz of cutting-edge models at Designing Studio last week, just in time for Japan’s peak spring sales season, we were truly impressed; it will be a tough choice for shoppers. The phones and services strongly illustrate one of the most fundamental and important learnings about Japan’s mobile success that we’ve been trumpeting for years.