>
> 1/ NTTDoCoMo advertises > 40m subscribers to i-Mode in Japan
>
> Is this based on subscription or usage? I am curious whether people are
this is subscription to the service.
> using i-Mode in these numbers.
While I don't have the actual statistics for usage, I imagine that the actual
figure of people that use i-mode is far lower. Many of my friends (japanese and
foreign) don't use any of the features that i-mode provides. The only thing you
can almost guarantee people will use is email. School kids seem to be far
happier using i-mode services. Occasional web sites, some play games and a lot
of i-melody too.
> phone. Do they buy the phone at the carrier with i-Mode automatically
> enabled? (subscribed?).
i-mode costs a few hundred yen extra on the monthly bill. But given the number
of services extra it provides and the low cost almost everyone enables it. I
imagine that i-mode usage will increase with new phones that can view larger
pages and flash. Personally I use it about 5 times what I did thanks to greater
access to sites I normally would read on my computer.
>
> 2/ Do Japanese consumers use i-Mode for java games or content? If so, how
again no statistics. But I'm guessing that half my students at a high school
will play games. They tend to stick to very few paid games though. People
access content too, but tend not to pay for it. (Though this may be different
in the adult market, or my school and other students i teach may not be
representative). Aparantly java is not popular with university girls.
> successful have consumers been in downloading over the local network and
> playing games that require consistent network access?
I've had no problems with either pay or free content. And no problems with
network access.
Does the network
> quality vary between i-Mode deployments in other markets or does NTTDoCoMo
> approve based on a Japanese benchmark for network reliability? I also
> understand i-Mode just deployed in Greece -- June 2004.
>
no idea sorry.
> I'd like to know more about the 'real world' usage of i-Mode and the success
> of its content providers -- those that fall strictly under the 'content
> camp' (pure C-cHTML) and those that fall under the 'entertainment camp'
> (java games).
>
I'd certainly like to know some more concrete answers in terms of numbers too.
Generally from seeing how people use it, they seem to do functional things like
buy tickets for concerts (or at least find out information), visit sites that
are tv linked, download ringtones etc, buy train tickets (or find out train
times). It's all very functional. I did here of some translation site that was
getting 10's of thousands of hits (for paid content) per month. So there must
be some money to be made. But in general people don't seem to pay for more than
a few i-appli's, and recurring charges seem fairly unpopular. However, docomos
payment method (if you're official) does seem successful. Many school kids I've
spoken to say that they really don't feel like theyre spending any money.
Sorry I couldn't help more - I hope someone else can. But hope this gives you a
tiny idea of usage here.
James.
Received on Wed Jun 23 19:31:42 2004