Re: WAP and mobile phone Internet access / Sep 17th

Yes Eric,

I think that there is a lot of truth in what you say.

DoCoMo (with imode) for example goes out of it's way
to attract users/subscribers and to attract content
these users want to see, and to have handsets available
which users want to have (they are a lot smaller than
those available elsewhere and many have pretty large
full color screens, and JAVA VMs soon) and imode has 
animated color images, which I think WAP does not have 
right now outside Japan (but soon will I think). WAP
has all that in Japan!

Best regards from Tokyo-

Gerhard Fasol
Eurotechnology Japan K. K.
http://www.eurotechnology.com/
fasol@eurotechnology.com


"J. Eric Townsend" wrote:
> 
> "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 22:45:20 UTC