In Mr Enoki Ms Matsunaga had an accomplice who could help translate her
In Mr Enoki, Ms Matsunaga had an accomplice who could help translate her vision into nuts and bolts, or at least circuit boards and LCDs. They also brought in Takeshi Natsuno, an energetic young entrepreneur with a flair for marketing. The three spent a lot of time at “Club Mari”, as her conference room was nicknamed, drinking beer and brainstorming ideas.The result was a product that was at once dazzlingly simple and dastardly clever, a union of hardware, software and service at a price most people could afford. Within six months of going on sale in February 1999, i-mode had 2.23 million subscribers. By April 2000, DoCoMo was unable to keep up with demand (more than one million users signed up in March alone).
In August, the number topped 10 million, a milestone reached 18 months earlier than DoCoMo had initially projected. DoCoMo shares have soared 55 per cent over the last year.The beauty of i-mode is that, unlike other wireless Web services, users are always connected to the internet, provided their cell phones can pick up a signal There is no logging on or dialling. What is more, it lets you access the Net at a tenth of the price of a regular mobile phone call, thanks to the so-called “packet communications” formula, in which data is transmitted in units priced at 0.3 yen (0.19 pence) per packet. In other words, you pay for nuggets of information, not time.
For example, it costs 1 yen (0.64 pence) to send a typical e-mail message, 25 yen (16 pence) to transfer bank funds and 12 yen (7.7 pence) to read the news.”In terms of technology, we just packaged together what was already there,” Ms Matsunaga says. “From the start, the idea was to develop the information equivalent of a convenience store: anytime, anywhere, anything.”Kotaro Chiba, of Tokyo-based Cybird, one of DoCoMo’s leading independent Web page providers, says only a computer dunce like Ms Matsunaga could have come up with something as ingenious as i-mode. “If it were entirely up to the engineers at DoCoMo, they probably would have been too hung up on the technology,” he says. “What was revolutionary about Matsunaga’s approach was that she made everybody forget about that and focus on content.”Content is what it is about. Users can call any of 600 official i-mode sites, or 20,000 unofficial ones, all formatted for the cell-phone screen. Because i-mode uses a compact version of html, the standard internet language, putting up Web pages is said to be a cinch.Under i-mode’s killer business model, DoCoMo cell phones also serve as portals for selected content providers, allowing them to microbill for their services.
Say you want regular financial news updates from the Nikkei Shimbun, Japan’s answer to the Financial Times. Nikkei charges subscribers 300 yen (£1.90) a month, which DoCoMo collects through its existing billing system. For this, it takes a 9 per cent cut.”Matsunaga’s role was really crucial in that she was the one who understood what kinds of information people will pay for,” says Tim Clark, whose Tokyo-based e-business solutions provider Web Connection regularly surveys Japan’s wireless Web market.Her other key insight had to do with marketing. Mobile phone operators in Europe have tended to target executive types for their Web-access services, but i-mode has gone for the man – or more precisely, the woman – on the street.It is hard to remember the last time a product came along that stood so succinctly for fashion, functionality and fun.Significantly, the most common uses for i-mode are e-mail and entertainment. The most popular unofficial home pages are said to be matchmaking sites, but the top official sites are the ones that let users download ringer-melodies and screen savers.Toymaker Bandai’s “Doko- demo Kyarappa!” site has one million subscribers, giving users daily doses of animated characters for 100 yen (65 pence) a month.In August, DoCoMo announced plans to work with Sony Computer Entertainment Inc, in a project combining i-mode with PlayStation.Many people in Japan feel more at home with mobile phones than PCs.
Three years ago, only 6.5 per cent of households were wired to the Web. That is now 20 per cent.The cell-phone business has never looked better. In April, the number of mobile phone subscribers outnumbered fixed-line subscribers, 56.7 million to 55.6 million. Japan has 20 manufacturers of mobile phones, compared to just four in Europe and two in the United States.So will i-mode conquer the planet? With the number of cell phone users worldwide expected to hit one billion by 2003, the folks at DoCoMo hope so. Under the company’s new president and CEO, Keiji Tachikawa, the strategy appears to be one of forging global alliances rather than looking for takeovers.In May, DoCoMo bought a 15 per cent stake in the cell phone subsidiary of Koninklijke KPN NV, the Dutch telecom giant. It also has a 19 per cent interest in Hong Kong’s largest cell-phone carrier, Hutchinson Telecom.In August, DoCoMo and America OnLine, the world’s biggest internet service provider, agreed on a tie-up allowing i-mode users to access AOL accounts. But Toshihiro Maeta, CEO of Tokyo-based Mobile Telecommunications International, a leading provider of WAP (wireless application protocol) content for the wireless Web, believes i-mode has already missedthe boat.”You have to look at the size of the market,” he says “Of course, the Japanese market is big.
