>I had an argument with an obnoxious sales rep from Nokia at a tradeshow
>here in Sydney recently who argued that mobile Internet is a success in
>Japan only because fixed-line penetration is sooooo low.
>I think that if you turn that statement around, it's true. WAP is such a
>failure in Europe because fixed-line Internet penetration is so high here.
>Most people started using computers in the latter part of the 1990s and are
>accustomed to large screens, colours, animations and sounds. When they use
>WAP for the first time, it's a huge disappointment. It's like being back in
>the VT100 days, but for people who have no experience of VT100. Most people
>in Japan had no point of reference when i-mode started in 1999.
>
>Joran
Actually, it's not true that net penetration in Europe is 'so high'. Apart
from the Scandinavian countries, net penetration in the major European
countries were about the same or lower than in Japan. Some numbers from ITU
1999:
Japan 15%
Germany 18%
UK 21%
Netherlands 18%
France 9.5%
Italy 9%
Spain 7%
(Victor - I found some of these stats (some slightly different though) in
your thesis, pp 33-34 together with a very useful discussion on the 'low
fixed-line net pentration means higher mobile Internet penetration' thing. I
fully agree with your conclusion.)
Now my theory is: Fixed-line Internet penetration is only a factor because
European and American operators decided to actively target users who were
most likely to use fixed-line Internet a lot (and therefore have a point of
reference) eg. business users. This group is clearly more difficult to
impress (which DoCoMo also discovered initially, and therefore switched
focus).
So fixed-line penetration rate is really irrelevant, but target audience is
not. And so I seem to have answered my own question here...
/Daniel
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Received on Mon Apr 2 03:39:29 2001