I-mode Was An Accidental Success

Mike Gauba, recently returned from Korea as a Professor and from working throughout Asia as a consultant, claims that the success of i-mode was an accident…and the reason it hasn’t been as successful outside Japan is that the telcos don’t know what it was a success, and therefore can’t replicate the phenomenon.
This entire post is his answer to why he thinks the success of i-mode in Japan was an accident, so you can tell it’s not very succinct…I think the following paragraph sums up his argument:

After discussing with a couple of i-mode service providers and also from the media reports, I gather the factors like low notional thresholds, technology disruption and network effect had not been considered for designing the value proposition of the service. If these factors came into play by themselves in Japan that does not mean that this will also happen in other markets too.

Interestingly, he cites as one reason i-mode hasn’t taken off in Europe is that: “In European markets, Internet was well entrenched when i-mode was first introduced and thus the challenge at that time was to migrate users from applications on Internet or other technology platforms to i-mode”, rather than the applications just being additional to voice.
I’ve read lots of different opinions about why some mobile content platforms are successful and others aren’t, often citing the need for the platform to be open and to pay a healthy percentage of proceeds to the content providers…of course, other people say that most people simply aren’t interested in the kinds of mobile content offered…
Related stories:
O2 To Launch i-mode Without Search
Goodbye I-mode, Hello FeliCa
O2 UK’s i-Mode Rev Share: 86 Percent

Comments have been disabled for this post