I had a few quibbles with the fact-checking in Tony's article, but I agree
with him that many of the quibbles are irrelevant - clearly by this stage
in i-mode's history there have almost certainly been a few failures. Or
depending on how you define 'failure' (such as "failure to turn a
significant profit after the first year of operation") there may have been
many failures, just as there have been on the web as a whole. My main
problem, though, was with the rather large leap of logic at the end of the
article - even if many sites fail, there are some sites that are successful
- it's all part of the shaking-out process to see what kinds of content and
services make sense on a mobile platform with a tiny screen and what kind
don't work so well. One could even argue that the i-mode menu is getting
way too crowded, and a little weeding out of not-so-successful content might
be a good thing.
I agree that there's been an extraordinary amount of uncritical hype about
i-mode, but I think this article seems designed to reassure its readers that
there's nothing at all to the hype, and as such it isn't really a service to
potential content providers. The lesson to be drawn from the case study
(had it been accurate) is that i-mode world isn't a magical land where
everyone makes pots of money - some businesses and some kinds of content
will work much better than others, just like everywhere else.
[For the record, "Natasha Nakamura's Diary" was a humor column that was
published in Tokyo Q, which is a city magazine covering music, art,
restaurants, clubs and other aspects of life in this great city. Tokyo Q
continues to publish weekly i-mode content as part of the i-Nokia site (and
also with its own link on the i-mode English menu), with recently expanded
coverage that includes the Japanese independent rock scene and Tokyo's
contemporary art galleries.]
[ Did you check the archives? http://www.appelsiini.net/keitai-l/ ]
Received on Fri May 11 16:24:20 2001