Bruce,
You're very right in pointing out how handset availability has been one bottleneck for mobile internet in Europe. And it's been a great success factor of DoCoMo's i-mode. They had 4 OEM:ed handsets out there at launch, while for example KDDI's EZweb only had one handset (in small quantities) at launch. That stopped the expansion of EZweb intitially, but they quickly came over it. Now that EZ has gotten a good lineup of handsets available, their (almost-WAP) service is growing as fast as i-mode (percentagewise, considering their total market share). I really agree that fast turnaround time is a great strength of Japanese electronics companies - it's impressice how they can make new models with customizations in small series, while "Western" makers until now have focused on getting huge volumes of few models to bring down cost. I agree they will have to be speedier too.
/Mats
Received on Mon Aug 21 06:58:25 2000