There is no question that mobile will eat into other communication
infrastructures. HK, for instance, was way ahead of the game; 6 years ago
when I first went there could not find any public phones in central areas.
Was told that because wireless was so prevalent public phones were for the
most part unnecessary.
I think there are still a good number of people mystified as to why "i-mode
is so much better than their wap based counterparts". Certainly, aside from
handsets, i-mode does not present any technological leap. Arguably i-mode
infrastructure is weaker from a number of respects in fact. So what is it
that makes it successful? As has been discussed many times before,
probably: pricing, social factors, time&place, consumer content focus.
Next question is which of the above is unique to the technology. Another
would be, can this success be transplanted internationally? Is the Internet
going to be a mobile phenomenon or is it going to be spread across a far
richer base of venues? Thinking about these questions, my conclusion is
that the current atmosphere is out-of-balance.
Don't get me wrong, I'm all for the mobile revolution - just would like to
see more consideration of the other possibilities.
---
Jonathan Shore
CTO
E-Publishing Group Inc
>
> some people are tired of all the Keitai Hype, but we captured
> some real life impressions of the Keitai impact on the japanese
> society:
>
> The silent death of public phones:
>
> http://nooper.co.jp/showcase/
>
[ Did you check the archives? http://www.appelsiini.net/keitai-l/ ]
Received on Mon Feb 12 04:40:16 2001