The high-end Nokia phones are supposedly popular in Hollywood because they double as a mirror. Was Jorma's speech in Nazareth an admission of weakness or a mirror for other companies to use to examine their own internal truths especially in the light of what's happening in Asia?
You decide.
Meanwhile, it looks like DoCoMo is moving to phase 2 of its plans to capture its fair share of the value of the services that will be delivered over its networks.
Do you see anything to suggest that WCDMA in Japan will be dead on arrival next year?
Denial - such a sad thing to watch in slow motion. Boring too.
Bye now. Enjoy.
interview with DoCoMo exec re: i-Mode
nikkeibp.asiabiztech.com
'I-Mode' Evolving into Portal, Ads, and Another 'Mode' for Music: NTT DoCoMo Exec. Says
June 29, 2000 (TOKYO) -- It seems there's nothing to stop the momentum of "i-mode," the mobile Internet service from NTT DoCoMo Inc. that uses mobile phones.
The number of i-mode subscribers surpassed seven million as of the end of May 2000. The i-mode service had banned its registered Web sites from displaying advertisements, but it lifted the ban in June 2000. NTT DoCoMo declared that i-mode has entered the second stage of evolution in terms of services. Nikkei NetBusiness conducted an interview on the company's business strategy with Shuichi Shindo, executive vice president of NTT DoCoMo, who is exerting leadership of the Mobile Multimedia business division.
Nikkei NetBusiness: The i-mode service for mobile phones is still running in high gear, isn't it? It accumulated as many as 200,000 subscribers per week at a peak, and finally reached 7.11 million people on May 31, 2000.
Shindo: The revenue from packet transfer communication business for the fiscal year ending this March amounted to 38.5 billion yen, and much of this income was earned by the i-mode service. Compared with the 200 million-yen turnover for the same month of the previous fiscal year, we can say i-mode has expanded our income many-fold from the packet communication business.
We solved troubles related to Internet mail via i-mode phones by reinforcing the servers and lifted the curb on subscriptions of new users as of the end of May. With the launch of the 209i series, an i-mode-featured version of the current 208 series mobile phones, onto the market at the end of this June, we will realize full implementation of i-mode in all of our personal digital communications (PDC) phones. In addition, we are planning to introduce a Java-featured version of the current 502i series mobile phones as the 503i series into the market this autumn to assure subscriptions of 10 million users by the end of December 2000.
Q: On June 1, NTT DoCoMo, Dentsu Inc. and NTT Advertising Inc. jointly established D2 Communications Inc. , an advertising agency for the i-mode service. But until recently, you prohibited the official Web pages of i-mode from running advertisements or linking to other pages of "unofficial" Web sites. What change did you make in your policy?
AsiaBizTech's note: Official i-mode sites mean those that are registered with NTT DoCoMo by the site operator. Users can reach listed Web sites by going through the i-mode menu, shown on the screen of i-mode compatible mobile phones. "Unofficial" sites are those not listed in the i-mode menu. To access these unlisted Web sites, users need to specify the URL on their mobile phone by actually typing it in.]
A: We have made no policy change on linking. The official Web site presented by NTT DoCoMo never accepts Web sites that go against public order and decency. Accordingly, there must be no link in our official Web site to such Web sites. This policy will still in effect even after advertising is allowed in the official Web site -- nothing new in our standards. The reason we banned advertising to be carried on the official Web sites until recently was that i-mode was yet to have a large-enough business potential to cover such a service. Now, with the subscription of 7 million users, however, i-mode is already a full-fledged and recognized medium. In step with the growth of this medium, business models for the i-mode service have also entered a new stage in their evolution.
Q: That means NTT DoCoMo will be pursuing other business models than advertisements from now on, correct? Do you plan to offer a search service to also include "unofficial" Web sites? As in the world of the Internet, the momentum toward building portal Web sites for the i-mode featuring a search function seems inevitable, doesn't it?
A: I believe things happening in the world of the Internet will naturally come into the sphere of i-mode. The largest merit of the entry of contents providers as an official Web site is the Bbusiness of collecting bills for them. NTTDoCoMo does not intend to create and feature its own contents. Discussion is under way about creating a portal site on our own that features a collection of contents provided through the alliance.
Q: Then it will become possible to have a strategy to exploit electronic commerce capabilities as a feature service if you had your Web site. In this regard, contents such as music may hold the key to a successful portal site.
A: We started trial music distribution for personal handyphone system (PHS) phones on May 25, 2000, and are planning to launch a commercial service as early as the coming October. I expect that music distribution though mobile phones needs to wait for the arrival of the next-generation IMT-2000 service.
But packet communication employed for i-mode is not suitable for downloading mass data such as music contents. Therefore, we are planning to provide music contents through a different service that is something like i-mode.
For communication bills, we need a different pricing system for music distribution aside from the current systems for telecommunication or packet communication. A feasible pricing system, for example, would be to bill a user for 100 yen (less than US$1) per music data downloaded.
Contents fees should also be billed in a different way from the pricing standards for the current i-mode service. A fee for every i-mode contents service is charged on a monthly basis up to 300 yen (about US$2.80). But the distribution of music contents or video contents, which are about to come to full provision in the future, requires prices such as a "pay-per-use billing" method to charge for every purchase of content. In such a pricing system, we will have no ceiling on charges, such as 300 yen on the monthly fees for the i-mode contents. What Sony Music Entertainment (Japan) Inc. sells for 350 yen per music through the Internet cannot be sold cheaper through i-mode, can it? Even though the service of IMT-2000 will start in May 2001, the music distribution service will come about one year later. This lag is due to a delay in the development of a new device required aside from the ordinary IMT-2000 phones.
Q: Transaction capabilities of the i-mode service for e-commerce are about to be reinforced by the Java compatibility of new mobile phones due this coming autumn and IC card installation in IMT-2000 terminals. If online payment by mobile phone comes true, why don't you embark on a transaction service business, setting up a separate entity such as "DoCoMo Bank," for example?
A: Mobile phones can be used as electronic wallets through Java technology. You can buy content through a mobile phone and pay for it by automatic deduction from your electronic wallet. Furthermore, with use of a non-contact IC card, which is scheduled for trial in the field since May 2001, you will enjoy shopping at actual shops in town with money saved in the IC card. If you get through all the money, you can recharge the card from a specific bank account by mobile phone.
Although we have not come up with anything particular yet, it may be an interesting possibility for NTT DoCoMo to launch a banking function for transactions capable of managing such accounts.
(Yasushi Nakata, Deputy Editor, Nikkei NetBusiness) |
