Jeff
A Note: The article does not explicitly mention that Virgin APPLIED to
become an official i-mode site before or after December. It says that AFTER
the Harajuku campaign was a failure, the marketing company WISHED it had
been on the menu. Understandable.
To be on the i-mode menu takes a lot of effort, for both common sense and
less clear reasons. If all companies that "whished" to be on the menu but do
little preparation where on it, it would certainly be crowded but of even
less value than today. After meeting with most European airlines I write
from experience.
At the EBC (European Business Community) eCommerce Committee I made a
presentation on "issues" related with Mobile Internet, including official
status access. This was in March 2000. If USTR was analyzing/concerned about
the mobile net then, they hid their interests rather well :-)
The Business Model/s and therefore Issues have since last year developed
beyond official menu access. Billing, Advertising, and the ever-present
Supplier Relations would come to mind. I would be interested in learning
about experiences also on these fields.
Vincent J. Luna, Director
--
JAPON.NET llc.: Making Your Company Visible in Japan
web_at_japon.net http://www.japon.net/web/
--
Vice-Chairman, eCommerce Committee
European Business Community 欧州ビジネス協議会
--
on 01.5.8 10:04 AM, Funk Jeffry Lee at funk@rose.rokkodai.kobe-u.ac.jp
wrote:
> Hello everyone,
>
> For those of you who are interested in the challenges of becoming an
> official i-mode site, here is an interesting article about virgin airline's
> efforts to do so courtesy of a british airways colleague. Even more
> interestingly, I heard a rumor that northwest (the only foreign airline on
> the i-mode menu) became an official site through its 50 year relationship
> with japan air systems. Sounds as if crony capitalism is alive and well in
> Japan and it is only a matter of time (maybe its already happened) before
> some government (probably the US govt) claims that i-mode's unclear
> evaluation of sites is a non-tariff trade barrier.
>
> Jeff Funk
> Associate Professor
> Kobe University
> Research Institute on Economics and Business
>
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Received on Tue May 8 06:23:18 2001