Hi Nina,
We met briefly some time ago across a dining table for the last MIT tour :-)
SMS has been almost abandoned years ago in favour of mobile mail as you know
(though some people still use carriers SMS services like "Sky Mail" for
Vodafone, etc.)
Among the reasons were (1) cheap price (per KB) (2) use of "emoji" (kind
of coloured emoticons)
(3) interoperability with standard mail (4) longer messages.
With the introduction of i-mode in Feb1999 came the subscription
business model
and some time later pay-per-download model for KDDI and J-Phone (now
Vodafone).
DoCoMo also finally introduced pay-per-download recently after sticking
to the subs model for 5 years.
All payments are reported on the phone bill and shared ~90/10 between CP
and carrier.
Thus, there was never a need to develop something link premium SMS which is,
in my own words "developing candle technologies instead of introducing
electricity".
Main reason is that premium SMS encourages carriers to stick with the
SMS model,
which is a clever solution ... to use a service in a way it was never
designed for.
As for 3G services, it depends what you call a 3G service...
If it is a service that need 144kbps+ connection for confort, you can have :
- video download
- video/content push (KDDI's EZ channel)
- comic download
- mobile commerce (KDDI's "AU de okaimono" : buy goods on the mobile,
pay on the phone bill up to a certain amount, and have products delivered)
- (the not-yet-so-popular-despite-all-the-fuss) video-phone (though this
is not packet-based)
- full songs download (KDDI)
- GPS pedestrian navigation (KDDI)
- Mobile banking (LG Telecom in Korea)
For a start...
For more details, there are not many solutions apart from having a look
at the carriers' websites
(all in local language) or ask for local help...
Cheers,
-- Benjamin
Nina Nordlund wrote:
>Hi,
>
>
>I have a question about premium priced SMS. I know SMS is not widely used in
>Japan, but I was wondering if premium-priced SMS can be used in Japan? If
>not, what payment is used when somebody want to use these one time
>transactions payments?
>
>
>
>Also, I would like to know, where I can get some info about 3G services in
>Japan and Korea? I haven't searched in the Internet yet, but I thought some
>of you guys might have better info about this :)
>
>
>
>Best regards,
>
>Nina
>
>v
>
>
>
>
>This mail was sent to address benjamin@newtgames.com
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>
>
>
>
Received on Tue Dec 14 16:39:21 2004