Infinita presents at Mobile Marketing Association Event in Austria

A couple of weeks ago I gave a presentation (which is downloadable here, 5MB, *.pdf) about the Japanese mobile industry for the Austrian chapter of the Mobile Marketing Association in Vienna, delivering an overview of the market, technologies and services here. Many of the jaws in the audience dropped when hearing about things like a mobile-only, carrier-unlisted site generating 9 billion page impressions a month - which is exactly what mobagetown, an extremely well-designed site combining free games, SNS, avatars and mobile commerce is doing (our in-depth report on mobagetown is available through our partner site Wireless Watch Japan). Another of the many “What the…?!?” moments was when I mentioned buttons on phones for elderly people that allow them to artificially slow down the voice of the caller for easier understanding. There are still many misconceptions of how and why things work in the world’s most advanced mobile market (“the Japanese don’t really have internet access at home”, “they spend much more time commuting than people in any other country” etc.), which I feel a need for to be set straight because they tend to be abused as an excuse for the lack of success the mobile internet has been enjoying elsewhere, so it was good to see so many heads nodding in agreement on crucial points such as the need for flat-rate data pricing, more balanced business models between operators and content/service providers and open (or at least commonly adopted) technological standards. You can download the presentation here (5 MB, *.pdf). I haven’t had the time to translate it into English yet, so for the time being, I posted the German version and will replace it with an English one shortly. My apologies. Most of it should be understandable for non-German speakers, too, and Google Translate will help those in a pinch. In retrospect I think it might not have been the smartest thing to do to hit the audience over the head with a good 100 charts in 90 minutes talking at Pitch +8 (for those of you who remember vinyl). All the more relieved I was to see that media coverage was not only plentiful, but also exact - the considerably complex topic of how and why the mobile ecosystem works in this country (and in how far the model would be transferable to other markets) apparently came across well. Only one article published on medianet.at got an important point slightly wrong: with regard to mobile payment and mobile ticketing via NFC (near field communication) chips like the Japanese FeliCa standard, the business model is not based on the companies supplying the NFC reader/writer devices for the relevant “currencies” (like BitWallet for “Edy”, JR East for “Suica” and NTT DoCoMo for “iD”) charging the retailers big bucks for installing the devices. Rather, the business model is based on transaction fees, similar to how VISA and MasterCard work with retailers. I would like to again thank everyone involved in making this happen, first and foremost MMAA Chairman Mr Roland Tauchner from DIMOCO, as well as the very keen and knowledgeable audience, from the commercial and the press side alike.

Posted by:Billich | Entry Date: 2007年5月22日 18:01