February « 2008 « CyberMedia Blog

February 29, 2008

Japan: Googles mobile future

In the past Japans number one carrier DoCoMo relied on Microsoft as well as on its own mobile services to attract and retain users but took a blow, back in 2007, with it’s DoCoMo2.0 campaign.

DoCoMo2.0 – NOT

The campaign, the services and the handsets did not excite Japanese consumer at all. Users were expecting a “web2.0″ concept but that was far from reality: The “2.0″ concept was about having 2 separate mobile numbers/mail addresses on one singe SIM card plus some small features like movement sensors and music download.

So if this is what DoCoMo2.0 was about then how will DoCoMo3.0 look like? 3 phone numbers on one SIM card? Not quite. The carrier was eager and willing enough to learn from its mistakes and made a big step from its closed ecosystem into the arms of the current online superpower: Google.

Getting in bed with Google

Early this year DoCoMo announced a long term strategic partnership with Google. This not only included the launch of Android devices lates this year but also the tight integration of Googles services in DoCoMos mobile ecosystem. KDDI already struck a small deal with Google a few years ago to integrate Google search on its carrier deck but this deal now goes far beyond that.

“Googlomo” mobile

DoCoMo will integrate services such as Youtube, Google maps, Google calendar Gmail, Picasa into its ecosystem and also provide them preinstalled on their mobile handsets. While Youtube and Google maps already have been launched on the i-mode platform the rest will follow later this year.

The future of mobile advertising

One even more interesting point is the integration of Googles AdWords system into the carriers deck. To top this Google will also offer display ads on DoCoMos services. So in a way Google will become the main ad service for DoCoMos platform.

All in all this is the first time for Google to fully roll out their scope of services to a mobile platform. And this platform is very big: DoCoMo has an installed user base of around 48 million mobile internet users. Over 80% of these users are 3G and 3.5G users. So this will be the big “real-life” test for Googles mobile future and the future of mobile advertisement.

The future of web2.0?

If you take into account that Japanese handsets are one of the most advanced handsets in the world today featuring GPS, RFID, WVGA screens and high-speed internet then this will might be the start of a new era which goes beyond what we have experienced as “web2.0″ in the past.

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Categories: Digital Market Insights, Focus Mobile — @ 11:41 am

February 18, 2008

The buzz they called SNS – the future of SNS

I posted this story on my personal blog about 6 month ago and decided to also post it here and update it a little as this topic is becoming more and more mainstream

SNS in Japan

Mixi is Japans most popular SNS service with a claimed market share of close to 70%. When conversation in the media come to SNS, Mixi is also the most mentioned Social Network Service. Mixi had around around 12 million in January 2008 a quite impressive number achieved in less than 3 years. After going public the stock value doubled within 12 hours. Mixi turned into the Japanese showcase for 2.0 success. So far the good part. But looking a bit deeper into the service reveals that the glory days of rising users numbers seem to reached its limit sooner or later. More and more users move and will move away from Mixi looking for alternatives. The reasons: too much little time, too much advertisement, too little added value.

Heavy Competition
Competitors like Gree, Mobage, S!Town and others offered a wide range of feature right from the start: the possibility to upload and watch videos, other platforms allow users to play games, listen to the playlists of people in their network, locate friends using GPS or even enter into mobile 3D worlds.

Mixi tried to keep-up by introducing video and music functions a few month ago but still Mixi stays what it is: a pure SNS service with some extra services attached to it.

The New Breed
If sheer user number speak for themselves then these two example can show where developments are going:

MobileGameTown (MoBaGe) by DeNA combines casual mobile games and SNS services. Just within less than 6 month registrations surpassed 6.5 million and they are still growing. And different from Mixi (which is web and mobile based) MoBaGe is only available on the mobile phone

“Maho no Island” is a mobile novel platform which allows users to write their own novels on the mobile phone and submit it to the site. The site offers thousands of novels written by users. They even published a book featuring some of the novels and it sold over millions of copies and made it into the best seller charts in Japan. Maho no Island also offers SNS functionalities to its 5.7 million mobile users.

Beyond SNS
All of these services did not start as a SNS service but they offered a unique value on its own with SNS as an added value to its users. And this is where the trend goes.

For example LISMO, KDDI AU’s mobile music service started to offer a function called “Utatomo” in 2006 for finding people with similar interests based on a users individual play list and their general interests helping the company to increase their overall music sales by 15%.

Conclusion
The time of SNS only services will soon be over. (Expect for maybe specific B2B or special interest SNS offers). In the future a SNS service will not be able to survive simply by providing a social networking functionality as a core service. Instead SNS functions will become part of other services helping to drive personalization (through the data gathered), drive loyalty and in the end to drive sales and generate revenue.

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