Word: docomo
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...easier. Many Japanese convenience stores are fitted with terminals that function as combination ATMs and online shopping kiosks, offering CDs, concert tickets and hotel reservations. The next step, say industry experts, is to link conventional vending machines with Japan's ubiquitous cellular telephones. In March, Japanese telecommunications giant NTT DoCoMo announced that it is teaming up with Coca-Cola Japan and Itochu Corp. to test a system that will link i-mode, the company's Net phone service, with vending machines, allowing users to pay for drinks by pressing a few buttons on their handsets...
...before 3G becomes a serious consumer business. "There's already an existing good alternative: second generation voice plus sms text messaging," Moroney observes. Then there's so-called 2.5G, which transmits data in a similar fashion to UMTS, but with more limited bandwidth. The innovative Japanese operator NTT DoCoMo, meanwhile, has designs on importing its own version of next-generation wireless to Europe. The really fun stuff like video streaming might come first through something called a wireless LAN, a network available in designated areas like cafés and hotels. Just think of a coffee shop...
...DoCoMo's phenomenal success came in large part because of Enoki's shrewd strategy: make it easy to use, easy to pay for and loaded with gimmicky content to dazzle and entertain Web novices. "The Internet scared Japanese people," says Yukiko Takahashi, a manager at Bandai Networks, a subsidiary of the toy company that gave the world the Tamagotchi virtual pet and created rudimentary games that have been big hits on i-mode. "It made people think about connecting a PC, using a keyboard, modems, ISDN lines, stuff they didn't understand and stuff that cost too much. The smartest...
...second largest economy, only 625,000 homes have high-speed Internet access, out of a population of 126 million people. PCs never caught on, in part because the first models were ugly and bulky and used keyboards the Japanese aren't comfortable with. "We're keypad people," says DoCoMo's president, Keiji Tachikawa...
...more important obstacle was money. Telecommunications is still a tightly regulated industry in Japan. Local phone calls are expensive and charged by the minute. Money, in fact, is one of the reasons the Japanese send e-mail on i-mode instead of simply calling their friends. DoCoMo charges i-mode users according to the amount of data they receive or send, not the amount of time they are online. One message with 50 characters costs 1 yen. A 1-min. phone call? Twenty...