NTT DoCoMo Inc. has admitted its first-ever weekly slip in i-mode subscriptions. According to DoCoMo records, it had 40,132,000 subscriptions to i-mode on Dec. 7, a drop of 12,000 compared to the total on Nov. 30, according to data published on its Web site.
DoCoMo Chieftain Tachikawa gave his final press conference of the year and looked happier and more relaxed than we’ve seen him for some time. And he should. After good first half financials and FOMA finally taking off, he was able to give a good spin on DoCoMo’s performance and managed to sling an arrow at Microsoft, as only a spin-off from a monopoly can! Japan’s phone market unexpectedly achieved solid 1H growth; net additions were almost the same 1H 03. 2H was down, but overall growth for DoCoMo will be 80 percent of 02. Japan’s phone market is NOT saturated. DoCoMo still thinks it will achieve 8 percent growth. Non-voice is growing, as well as voice. Japan’s penetration rate still lower than Europe. DoCoMo still sees growth opportunities. Full Program Run-time 20:24
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 article, 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.
NTT DoCoMo, Inc. reported that Wind Telecomunicazioni S.p.A. announced the release of DoCoMo’s i-mode service to the Italian market today. Italy marks the eighth market for i-mode service, which is already available in Japan, Germany, the Netherlands, Taiwan, Belgium, France, and Spain. Wind is Italy’s third largest mobile telecom company, with approximately 10 million subscribers.
WWJ co-founder Daniel Scuka reports from Germany
Earlier this month, I wrapped up a 7-city seminar tour, “Mobile Kaizen in Japan.” The one-day MKiJ seminars, co-produced with Mobile Economy, were an in-depth look at the success factors behind the wireless Internet in Japan. Here are some of my own findings..
Attendees included mid- and senior-level people from carriers, content providers, consulting firms, and mobile application houses, as well as several academics, some students, and one or two journalists. All in all, it was a fun, eye-opening experience, and – as best I can tell from verbal and mail feedback – was well enjoyed by our audience.
In September, a group of IT professionals visited Japan to roll up their sleeves and find out who are pushing what enterprise applications here. With FeliCa debuting in trial form a few weeks from now, we were interested in hearing their views about Japan’s ready-built business apps. infrastructure. You may be surprised by their findings. Independent consultant (and WWJ subscriber) Donal O’Shea was part of the group that included representatives of a major French airline, an Australian steel company and a UK-based package delivery company, together with Douglas Neal and Piet Opperman of CSC Research Services and Sebastien Bacholet of Cigref. They met with Qualcomm, HP, IBM, NTT DoCoMo, Alcatel/Fujitsu, Telecom France, Nissan, and Hitachi, and toured the Yokohama Reasearch Park. Wow, Big Big Itinerary… In a nutshell, concludes O’Shea, “carriers have never understood the enterprise…”
