(keitai-l) Re: Free article: "Mobile Music in Japan - Japan's reality is our future"

From: Benjamin Joffe <benjamin_at_newtgames.com>
Date: 11/25/04
Message-ID: <41A567B8.6020304@newtgames.com>
Hi Jan,

Nice article you wrote !
It underlines many interesting points, and I like very much the conclusion
/"Learning from Japan makes sense as there are basically no differences 
between
end user cultures in Japan and other countries, but many differences 
between management cultures."
/
I have been fighting to have people understand how cultural differences 
should
not be used as an excuse /not to analyse/ the fundamentals of the 
Japanese (or other) successes.
Sadly, the "Not Invented Here" sybdrom is still prevalent in many cases...

I would like to comment on one point : the content market evaluation you 
give corresponds
to content sales and do not include data traffic (the famous "data ARPU").
Actually, most users do not have a clear understanding that they are 
paying additional data charges.

- Data traffic (100% pocketed by carriers) generated about $10 billion 
for DoCoMo and
~$3 billion each for KDDI and Vodafone in fiscal year 2003. All this 
data traffic is pocketed by Carriers.
Thus, the total content market including "transport" is in fact over 
2(content)+(10+3+3) = $18 billion.
It is likely that about 1/3 to 1/2 of it is related to mobile music.

- Especially, carriers (and analysts) often compare "data ARPU share", 
which is typically in the 10~20% range in Europe.
But while European cellcos get almost all their money from SMS (over 80% 
for a service with more than 80% profit margin...),
messaging in Japan is now a very low part of the data revenues (as one 
game DL can generate 200 times
the packet revenues of an e-mail).

This is a point that is almost never analyzed, but which actually shows 
the discrepancy
between the Japanese market and others.

Last, I have been working with the consulting company
Vectis International to put together a report on  mobile music best 
practices.
Tentative title is :  "Mobile Music in Japan & Korea - Best Practices 
for Ring Tones,
Ringback Tones Services and MP3 Phones from the World's Most Advanced 
Mobile Markets".
This ~200 pages report should be on sale sometime in December (due to 
some delays...).
If anybody is interested in getting more information or pre-booking
(the report will probably retail in the $2000~3000 range) please contact 
me off-list.

BTW, will you be in Tokyo in December ?
I will visit from Seoul for 2-3 weeks before flying to some warm place 
for Christmas.

Cheers,
Benjamin


Jan Michael Hess wrote:

>Dear keitai-lovers,
>
>I would like to share with you my latest mobiliser article.
>It's very fresh info on the 3G market in Japan and the
>leading mobile music segment.

[ excessive quoting removed by moderator ]
Received on Thu Nov 25 07:04:34 2004