WAP and mobile phone Internet access / Sep 17th

"Mark" == Mark Griffith <markgriffith@rocketmail.com> writes:

Mark> So why does Japan have a lead in WAP and i-mode?

Some guesses: Their providers are actually interested in selling it?
They don't see it as some goofy thing that'll be in the junkpile
tomorrow?  Their employees are competent?

A little anecdote to illustrate my guesses:

I work at a company doing handheld wireless solutions (Icras, Inc.:
<http://www.icras.com>).

The other day I listened to one of our senior sales engineers relate
his tale of spending a week trying to get one of the Big Cellular
Providers to sell us a developer's kit.  One of our customers wants
our hardware to work with Big Cellular Provider, so we need to get a
developer's kit and make it happen.  It's an easy sell and an easy
project.

Our guy contacted many different people over the course of a week.  He
scoured their website for the right contact, cold-called different
divisions, talked to people in marketing, sales and sales tech
support.  The few people that answered their phone told him that they
weren't the person distributing the development kits discussed on
their website and in their marketing brochures, but maybe he should
try So-and-So, over in this other group.

A full week of trying to get a developer's kit so we can sell a
product to someone using Big Cellular Provider's networks, but nobody
at Big Cellular Provider knows who distributes them.

Even more importantly, nobody ever called him back.  He left something
like a dozen voice mail messages for people, but not one response.
Not even from people saying "Wow, I don't know how you got my number,
but try this guy instead."

When I've worked with Japanese companies in the past, they fell all
over themselves trying to get us to use their services.  

So maybe the reason i-mode is big in Japan is simply because the
Japanese companies are responding to customers who want to deploy
i-mode solutions.

-- 
jet at well.com -- J. Eric Townsend -- <http://www.spies.com/jet>

Received on Saturday, 16 September 2000 21:44:04 UTC