In this week's Wireless Watch (J@pan Inc.) sports the
following shameless bit of techno-hagiography:
> ....remarkable that Natsuno, an outsider parachuted
> in from failed, free ISP Hypernet, and Matsunaga, also an
> outsider, were able to get a bunch of NTT DoCoMo
> "we're-a-telco-and-customers-come-last" mindset engineers to
> accept the proposition that if i-mode wasn't easy to use, and
> cheap, and that if there wasn't sufficient content to compel
> people to use it, then the service would go nowhere. One
> wireless VC said a couple of weeks ago that, ....it's only by
> chance that the revolution started here. If Natsuno, Matsunaga,
> and Enoki hadn't come together to light the fuse, wireless
> would have happened elsewhere.
I.e., the Great Men (and/or Woman) Theory of History.
VCs know better, of course - or the smart ones do, anyway.
But then, even the smart ones have to make a show of
fawning over the "entrepreneurial personality." Hey,
pay me millions, I'd do it too!
Great Men is just one theory of history, though. And
Japan isn't exactly the first country you'd think of, if
you had to name one often swayed by rugged individuals,
at least in the postwar period. I'd love to believe that
it was just The Three DoCoMoteers, but I just can't.
There must be better explanations.
So let's go back, for a moment, to the Economic Animal
stereotype. It's vicious, yes, but sometimes useful when
puzzled about Japan. And revisit the Economic
Determinism Theory of History. (Marx wasn't wrong
ALL the time, after all). And also recollect - admit it,
you slept through that course - that before the
great micro/macro split in economics, there used to be
a field of study called Political Economy, of which
present-day trade relations would certainly be a part.
Then consider the following argument:
(1) Artificial pent-up demand (from MPT regulations
designed to keep Japan Incorporated executive
perks restricted to the privileged few.)
(2) Opening of celphone market by trade pressure
(U.S. gaiatsu)
(3) Prospect of unmeetable voice demand on
existing PDC network (NTT's TDMA-centric
johnny-one-note approach to networking)
(4) Design of keitai data network services
to head off DoCoMo network saturation
and loss of marketshare to other wireless
providers (something, anything,....i-mode!)
(5) Genuine usability considerations triumph
(for once), in the design of i-mode.
Strained reasoning? I don't think so.
Supporting quotes from "Deconstructing 'Phone Culture'"
(Ray Tsuchiyama, ACCJ Journal, July 2000; web vers.:
http://www.t9.com/Articles/journal_7-00.htm)
(1) Artificial pent-up demand
"The [then] ministry of Posts and Tele-
communications kept stubbornly to a
leasing scheme and high tariffs for cellular
phones that restricted subscribers to
executives on expense accounts. By the
Spring of 1994, 15 years after the first
wireless handsets were introduced in Japan,
there were only 2.1 million subscribers." (p.14)
(2) Opening of celphone market by trade pressure
(U.S. gai-atsu)
"At that opportune moment, the U.S.
government intervened ....What emerged
was the 1994 Cellular Telephone
Agreement, which, according to
Making Trade Talks Work: Lessons
from Recent History (ACCJ, 1997),
'abolished restrictions and delays in
establishing the technical networks
necessary to meet growing demand for
cellular service.....a further important
change was that customer-owned and
maintained cell phones were permitted....
(Ultimately) this brought about the new
competition, reduced prices, and a ten-
fold increase in cellular services in two
years.'" (p.14)
(3) Prospect of unmeetable voice demand on
existing PDC network
"With success came unexpected dangers.
In 1997, frightening scenarios were aired
about the collapse of the Japan-only PDC
digital network by 2001. Too many subscribers
were making calls simultaneously, which meant
that available 'time slots' (hence the 'time-
divisional in the TDMA protocol name) fell
short of demand." (p.16)
(4) Design of keitai data network services
to head off network saturation
"For one scary period, as NTT DoCoMo
lost market share, it faced the dilemma
of having to borrow even further to expand
an infrastructure based on decade-old PDC
technology. The entire network would be
obsolete before the debts were paid off.
The company then noticed that Japanese
cell phone users were changing handsets
at a phenomenal rate....It embarked on a
program to entice subscribers to use more
data, rather than voice, on its existing
network. The objective was to buy time,
while postponing investment in a completely
new infrastructure.
"Thus, the stage was set for a 'killer app'....."
(p.17)
As for "(5) Genuine usability considerations
triumph (for once)," here, I'm on my own and
I'm guessing. But it's not a difficult guess. At
least if RayTsuchiyama's story is more or less
correct.
Remember the movie "Three Kings", and the
Archie Gates (G. Clooney's) line about necessity?
In that film, U.S. soldiers operated unmolested,
collecting Kuwaiti gold in a snakepit of Republican
Guard in southern Iraq, because, just then, the
Guard had a higher priority: suppressing a Shi'a
rebellion.
http://www.reelquotesnewsletter.com/Three%20Kings.html
Necessity. Sometimes a man's gotta do what a
man's gotta do. Even when it's a woman, like
Mari Matsunaga, telling him to do it.
Voice was and still is the killer app of celphones,
and CDMA-1 phones offered better voice
quality, while DoCoMo's quality was poor, and set
to worsen. So NTT DoCoMo *had* to listen to
ideas about wireless-data usability for consumers.
And implement them. They didn't have a choice.
They had to keep getting those customers, *and*
keep them off the airwaves once they had them.
Somehow.
As I put it in a keitai-l posting, some time
back:
"I mean, we're talking Miles from The
Parking Lot and No Spare Diapers...."
(http://www.appelsiini.net/keitai-l/archives/2000-12/0198.html)
-m
leap@gol.com
[ Did you check the archives? http://www.appelsiini.net/keitai-l/ ]
Received on Fri Apr 13 17:04:59 2001