The Mobile Internet: How Japan Dialled up and the West Disconnected [Hardcover]

Jeffrey Lee Funk (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 1, 2001

The mobile Internet has been phenomenally successful in Japan, with 70% of the world’s mobile Internet subscribers and 90% of the mobile Internet income in Japan, and a dismal failure in the US and Europe, who each account for less than 5% of the world’s subscribers. Jeff Funk compares the US and Japanese approaches to the mobile Internet and shows how the different approaches have led to such wildly different market responses.

It becomes apparent when reading The Mobile Internet, that the reason for the success of the mobile Internet in Japan is that the initial focus of the service providers was on the initially appropriate content, phones, business models, portal/search engines, services, and users (the critical factors), thus creating positive feedback between each of them. This positive feedback has caused each of the critical factors to quickly evolve, and in ways that suggest the mobile Internet is both different and an important complement to the fixed-line Internet.

At first, the users of the mobile Internet in Japan were young, and the services, phones, content, portals, and content provider business models were simple. Jeff Funk describes how each of these items has evolved from simple to complex, and users have quickly diversified. US and European firms must rethink their approaches to the mobile Internet, focusing first on the initially appropriate critical factors. Unless they do, they will probably not see strong growth in their mobile Internet markets and their third generation services are most likely to fail.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"...a great book... a detailed template for how to create new disruptive technology markets" -- Clayton Christensen, author of The Innovator's Dilemma

"...will help Western audiences understand the power of the i-mode model... read this book" -- Martin Kenney, Professor, Dept. of Human & Community Devleopment, Berkeley Roundtable on the INternational Economy, Univeristy of California

"This book proves to be a very insightful guide to the way ahead in the mobile world" -- Dr. G.B. Huitema, Senior Scientific Consultant, KPN Research

About the Author

Jeff Funk is Associate Professor of Business at Kobe University’s Research Institute for Economics and Business Administration. He has been studying the global mobile phone industry and the mobile Internet for more than five years. His previous books include Competition Between and Within Standards: The Case of Mobile Phones.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: ISI Publications Ltd (October 1, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 9627762695
• ISBN-13: 978-9627762690
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.3 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,984,781 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Deep insights into marketing in- and outside of mobile I-net, April 4, 2002

By 

Mike Tarrani "www.tarrani.com" (Deltona, FL USA) - See all my reviews
(COMMUNITY FORUM 04)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Mobile Internet: How Japan Dialled up and the West Disconnected (Hardcover)

On one level this book is an examination of how mobile internet services were successfully developed and deployed in Japan. At this level the author goes into how the right mix of attractive services were developed, customers identified and then successfully marketed. The author provides ample supporting data and insightful analysis. He also demonstrates a thorough understanding of the key players who brought the success about, and their tactics. In this respect this book is a blueprint for American, European and Middle Eastern providers. After carefully reading the book for this level of knowledge I was surprised at how small the role of culture; instead the demographics and data indicate that success depends on understanding a generation (age group) that shares common characteristics regardless of nationality or cultural bias.

There is a second level to this book and one that I hope readers don't miss: the concept of primary and secondary feedback loops in an ecology-based model that technologies, demographics, content/information, business models and delivery. This model would serve any industry segment, and it is one of the most elegant approaches to market analysis and strategy to which I've been exposed.

If you're in the telecom provider industry this book is, without a doubt, a treasure for anyone involved in marketing and strategic planning. Not only does it describe in detail what NTT DoCoMo did right, leading to its success as a powerhouse mobile internet service provider, but it also highlights mistakes made along the way and some of the challenges that they are now facing (and some that they will have to face). The value of this is you learn from the experience of others.

If you're in another industry there is still much this book has to offer: effective techniques, a case study in innovative marketing, and a reminder that identifying target customers and understanding their usage and buying habits are keys to success.

The copious data, cited sources and each chapter's summary make this a complete and thorough work. If you're looking for technology-related information this is not the book. If you're looking for innovation in marketing this book is essential.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Essential for understanding mobile usability & requirements, December 17, 2001

By 

Linda Zarate "IT Ops Consultant" (Azusa, CA United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Mobile Internet: How Japan Dialled up and the West Disconnected (Hardcover)

My motive for reading this book was to check my understanding of the issues and factors involved with mobile communications for PDAs and digital phones. As a recent member of a product development project for extending SAP R/3 and PeopleSoft to mobile phones and PalmOS PDAs I thought I had a grasp of the technology and associated issues. How wrong I was. This book provided me with a basic framework that would have proven invaluable during my project, and some key insights about mobile internet devices as opposed to landline-based devices.

The framework uses primary and secondary feedback loops between and among services to be offered, user populations, content, device type, business models and portals and search engines. This framework allows an analyst (or marketing specialist) to classify the elements based on ranges (simple to complex, single-to-multifunctional, etc.) and to examine cause and effect, and significance.

There are many levels to this book and more than one audience. My comments are from the viewpoint of an IT consultant whose goals are to understand mobile internet requirements, how content can be effectively displayed on small screens and the future of mobile computing with phones and PDAs. This book will also prove invaluable to marketing specialists, business strategists and infrastructure capacity management folks; however, none of these areas are covered in this review. Within this context I gleaned the following knowledge and insights from this book: (1) attempting to based mobile services on scaled down landline internet services is a mistake because the devices for each are vastly different, (2) a common mistake is to start with complex services and systems - the wild success of Japan is based on starting simple, and the abysmal failure of the US and Europe is based on providers attempting the opposite. Both of these basic principles are directly tied to the trade-offs between reach (services available to a mobile device have greater reach than a landline device) and richness (limitations of a mobile display restricts the 'glitz' that can be presented on that display). The foregoing should be carefully studied by anyone who is concerned with usability, and is also must reading for content developers and architects. In addition, the research performed by the author provides some insights about what people likely to embrace mobile internet access seek. There are some surprises here because two of the most popular consumers of bandwidth are downloading screen savers and ring tones. Another surprise is the usage patterns, which are typically restricted to 10-minute spurts, and the difference between mobile and fixed internet peak use patterns. All of the facts presented are backed with statistics and cited references. The author's research methods will prove interesting to requirements analysts and marketing analysts.

The book ends with an objective view of what Japan is doing right and what the rest of the world is doing wrong with respect to mobile internet usage, which is balanced by weaknesses and threats to Japan's early success and opportunities available to the US and Europe for cashing in on the mobile internet. Even if you have no specific learning objectives this book makes for an interesting read and would make an excellent text for a college course in marketing.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Good insights on the mobile Internet, December 10, 2001

By 

Kiriyama (Japan) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Mobile Internet: How Japan Dialled up and the West Disconnected (Hardcover)

This is a excellent book. It is filled with insights about differences between PC and mobile Internet. We are medium-sized Internet firm and this book is helping us create new strategy in the mobile Internet in Japan. I really like chapters on combining mobile Internet with televisions, magazines, bricks and mortar, etc. There are many things to do with i-mode.