Suri and Sawhney (2008) - The internet and its wireless extensions in Japan
From Inventiopedia
Suri, Venkata Ratnadeep and Harmeet Sawhney (2008) "The internet and its wireless extensions in Japan: the portentous interface between chaos and order", in Info, vol. 10, no. 3, pp. 10-21.
This is an interesting case-study of the development of the mobile internet in Japan, with particular focus on DoCoMo's i-Mode network. The author's are portraying the i-Mode as a closed, ordered model in which the operator retains strong control over the entire value chain in a model described as "a value generating ecosystem". i-Mode was launched already in 1999, and has enjoyed great success, with 53 % market share (52.9 million subscribers) in Sept. 2007. The system is a "walled garden" approach in which content providers must search for approval from the operator in order to become "official content providers", with privileged access to users through the operator portal, browser and search features.
In sum, an ecosystem approach allowed the telecom service providers to manage an effective ‘ ‘walled garden’ ’ content delivery system where they place themselves between users and content producers by creating tightly controlled networks (Carter et al., 2003) and acting as conduits between an array of actors and consumers in the ecosystem (Natsuno, 2003). [page 13]
What we see here is a technological landscape dominated by ‘ ‘order’ ’ with ‘ ‘chaos’ ’ at the margins. On the one hand, there has been a rapid growth of the content industry with an estimated 90,000 unofficial sites and over 6,500 official sites (DoCoMo, 2006). On the other hand, the telecom service providers believing that their interests lie in keeping the user within the ‘ ‘walled gardens’ ’ of the official content sites, have tried to do so by making it much easier to access official sites than unofficial ones. [page 15]
However, in recent years this system has been threatened by changes in technology (3G deployment leading to higher demand for advanced services and multimedia), a boom in the content industry and integration of search engine capabilities and micro-browsers which allow users easier access to unofficial content. When KDDI, the second largest operator, incorporated Google search in 2006, the search activity on their portal tripled in one month. And the traffic pattern changed drastically: Only 22 percent of the searches led the users to visit official pages, whereas the rest went to unofficial mobile sites or normal PC sites.
Also, attempts at exporting the i-Mode to Europe and Australia have met with limited or no success.
...i-Mode is a good technology but it appears to be turning out to be a transitional technology. The world is moving away from the ‘ ‘walled garden’ ’ approach to the Internet to the totally open Internet experience, much like on your PC (quoted in O’Brien, 2007, online). [page 18]
Thus the system is changing from a closed and hierarchical one into something more of a hybrid system with elements of the PC internet's open and non-hierarchical structure.
as of now the chaotic order of the internet seems to be seeping into the ‘ ‘order’ ’ of the wireless arena. Currently, the portal-centric model of mobile internet is existing in an uneasy coexistence with the more open model of the internet. [...] What seems to emerge is that for now the mobile internet in Japan has evolved into a hybrid model that encompasses aspects from both the closed model of mobile internet and the open one of the internet itself. As to what direction will the equilibrium tilt remains to be seen. [page 19]
The article also mentions a surprising use of location technology, in the search for new business models in a hybrid system:
The second example is the Otetsudai; or what has been termed as ‘ ‘an auction system for local labor’ ’. The system matches up employers who are looking for temporary workers with workers who are looking for temporary jobs within a specific geographical area using a mobile phone’s GPS functionality (Billich et al., 2007).
--Anders Sundnes Løvlie 12:32, 15 October 2008 (UTC)
