James Franklin wrote:
> While I don't have the actual statistics for usage,
We have collected many statistics (e.g. how many emails/day,
how many kbits of imode data transfer per user per day on average,
total imode usage in kbits/day, total number of accesses for many
different sites, cash transaction volume, mcommerce transaction
volume etc etc etc) and you can find them in our i-mode report:
http://www.eurotechnology.com/store/imode/
I can assure you that actual i-mode usage is very high in Japan -
you only have to take a train at rush hour and check with your
own eyes. The statistics we have collected totally confirm our
observations and focus group work in Japan (we are working for
several companies entering i-mode markets in Japan, and we build
several. To prepare we did focus group work, asking people in different
social groups about their imode usage and related issues).
> I imagine that the actual figure of people that use i-mode is far lower.
No. Actual i-mode usage is high in Japan.
> Many of my friends (japanese and
> foreign) don't use any of the features that i-mode provides.
Your survey maybe does not sample a representative section of Japan?
We have the actual total access numbers and the actual total data
volume moved through i-mode, and also the total transaction volume
in US$ etc. To understand the total importance of i-mode you really
can't rely on asking a few friends, no must look at the total Japanese
population, and the total number of transactions, and the total number
of data packets/emails moved through the imode system etc. We have these
numbers and you can find them in our report:
http://www.eurotechnology.com/store/imode/
> The only thing you can almost guarantee people will use is email.
I don't know what you mean by "almost guarantee". We have the total
of emails in-going and out-going/users and the data volume/day for all
of Japan.
As a hint: on average i-mode users send about 7-10 emails/day.
> School kids seem to be far
> happier using i-mode services. Occasional web sites, some play games and a lot
> of i-melody too.
That is not true. i-mode is not preferentially used by school kids.
All age groups and all social groups of Japan use imode. There is
a small preference by men in the 20-30 age group, but that is only
a slight preference.
>>phone. Do they buy the phone at the carrier with i-Mode automatically
>>enabled? (subscribed?).
no. they must ask for it specifically and agree to the monthly charge -
and pay the charge every month.
> 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.
We have many of these statistics and you can find them in our imode
report: http://www.eurotechnology.com/store/imode/
The number of accessess, data volume per cathegory, and volume of
transactions/payments for paid content etc is known, and you'll find
this in our report.
>>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.
We have the total amount - it's in the US$ billion range.
> 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.
Yes. and you can measure the success in terms of dollars moved -
it's in the US$ billion range.
> Many school kids I've
> spoken to say that they really don't feel like theyre spending any money.
Hope this helps, please contact me directly outside this group if you
need to know more.
Gerhard
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Gerhard Fasol, PhD Eurotechnology Japan K. K.
fasol_at_eurotechnology.com http://www.eurotechnology.com/
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Received on Thu Jun 24 11:19:42 2004