From: Adam Rifkin (adam@KnowNow.com)
Date: Sat Aug 19 2000 - 14:32:49 PDT
Rohit, please remember to put URLs for content in when you FoRK
something; e.g., the "North Pole is melting" story is at
http://www.nytimes.com/library/national/science/081900sci-climate-pole.html
So Greg, I am all for a WAP alternative. Might even be able to make
some money creating sites people would want to access from their phones
instead of spending all their time trying to figure out how to get out
of the WAP ghetto...
> On the cellular phone, "people don't necessarily assume that the
> service would be free," said Tsuyoshi Kuwabara, research director at
> Wit Capital Japan. "And the fact that the carrier collects money for
> the content providers is crucial. Not having a solid way to collect
> money is what makes start-up firms vulnerable."
I do love this one:
> The Bandai Company, a toy maker that created the blockbuster
> Tamagotchi digital pet, runs Japan's most popular mobile Internet
> service, a year-old Web site called Charappa. For a monthly fee of
> 100 yen, 1.3 million subscribers can embellish their cell phones with
> copyrighted screen-saver images of popular musicians or cartoon
> characters.
Taken from the article below...
http://www.nytimes.com/library/tech/00/08/biztech/articles/19japan-cell.html
> Phone Surfing For a Few Yen
> Japan Web Sites Navigate A Serene Revenue Stream
> By MIKI TANIKAWA
> Stuart Isett/ Corbis Sygma for The New York Times
>
> TOKYO, Aug. 18 -- Spurred by growing Internet use in Japan, Kazutomo
> Hori in 1995 built Paradise Web, an Internet site that offered chat
> lines and bulletin boards. The service thrived, but Mr. Hori could
> not figure out how to get users to pay.
>
> "People talked about obtaining revenue from advertisements and
> charging users with electronic money," said Mr. Hori, who considered
> asking customers to make bank transfers or even send in stamps for
> payment. "But when will that happen? Ten years from now?"
>
> Now, Mr. Hori's anxious days are over. Early last year, Japanese
> wireless communications carriers, including NTT DoCoMo, the DDI
> Corporation and the Japan Telecom Company, introduced
> mobile-phone-based Internet services. The wireless Web not only
> increased the time people could spend on the Internet, it gave Mr.
> Hori, 34, and other service providers an easy way to collect
> subscription fees -- through customers' mobile phone bills.
>
> "It's a new business model" for information providers on the
> Internet, said Toby Rodes, an analyst with Nikko Salomon Smith Barney
> in Tokyo. "With the PC, they made a mistake and put up all the
> contents for free, and you can't go back and start charging people.
> With mobile Internet, there will always be price for content."
>
> It remains to be seen if the Japanese model can be transplanted to
> North America and Europe, where markets are more fragmented and
> customer tastes vary. To hedge their bets, however, foreign companies
> including Yahoo and Intel, have invested in some Japanese wireless
> Web businesses to tap growth here or investigate the possibility of
> duplicating services in the United States and Europe.
>
> The Japanese have been doing the same. NTT DoCoMo, Japan's largest
> wireless carrier and the originator of the greatly popular i-mode
> wireless Web service in this country, is in talks with BellSouth and
> SBC Communications of the United States about acquiring a minority
> stake in a wireless phone venture created by the two regional Bell
> companies. NTT DoCoMo is also a partner of one of the winning bidders
> for licenses to operate new third-generation wireless services just
> auctioned in Germany.
>
> In Japan, the relative ease of collecting fees for wireless Internet
> services has created an entrepreneurial boom. Dozens of services,
> from restaurant guides to surf forecasts, have already captured large
> numbers of users and new ones are announced almost daily -- offering
> games, weather, traffic information, stock quotes, even cartoons.
>
> While Internet companies in the United States struggle to generate
> profits, many Japanese mobile phone content providers are in the
> black within months of going into business. They simply add their
> fees, usually less than $5 a month, to their subscribers' cellular
> phone bills.
>
> The growth of wireless Web services in Japan has mirrored the success
> of mobile phones linked to the Internet. Since NTT DoCoMo started its
> i-mode wireless Web service a year and a half ago, almost 10 million
> subscribers have signed up. Two other cellular groups, Japan Telecom
> and three carriers due to merge into the KDDI Corporation in October,
> count 1.7 million and 3 million users, respectively.
>
> DoCoMo says it has more than 19,000 Web sites designed for i-mode
> users. (Web sites must be formatted for Web phone use, and each
> carrier adopts a different standard.)
>
> The Cybird Company, of which Mr. Hori is president, offers 50
> services to mobile Web surfers, and has discontinued Paradise Web,
> its unprofitable Internet site designed for personal computer users.
> One of Cybird's most popular offerings, Nami-Densetsu, charges each
> of its 85,000 subscribers 300 yen, or $2.77, a month for the wave
> conditions at 147 points on Japan's coasts as well as a guide to surf
> events and shops.
>
> Mr. Hori said most of his wireless Web projects were profitable
> within several months of being introduced.
>
> The Bandai Company, a toy maker that created the blockbuster
> Tamagotchi digital pet, runs Japan's most popular mobile Internet
> service, a year-old Web site called Charappa. For a monthly fee of
> 100 yen, 1.3 million subscribers can embellish their cell phones with
> copyrighted screen-saver images of popular musicians or cartoon
> characters.
>
> Subscribers, many of them teenagers, are happy to pay. "It's cute,"
> said Sei Yoshida, a 17-year-old Tokyo high school student, who showed
> off the image of her favorite singer, Ringo Shiina.
>
> One reason people who resist paying for services on their personal
> computers are willing to subscribe to wireless Web services is
> convenience. Not only can they pay without giving credit card
> information over the Internet, but they can also find reliable
> information more easily.
>
> Each phone company provides subscribers with a menu of services
> tailored to their interests. These menus let customers sign on to a
> service with a click of a button rather than finding and typing in a
> complete Web address. Service providers are also vetted by the phone
> companies before being added to the menu, giving consumers added
> confidence in what they are buying.
>
> In Japan, an offer to buy a celebrity's jacket or other personal
> effect on the Web might be greeted skeptically if someone came across
> it while surfing the Net on a desktop computer, Mr. Hori of Cybird
> said. "Would anybody trust it?" he asked. "But if it's on a carrier's
> official menu, most people would believe it -- and 99.9 percent of
> the time, the thing is real."
>
> Buyers and sellers can be confident about wireless Web transactions,
> he added, because both sides of each transaction are checked by the
> telephone services provider: sellers when they seek to join the
> official menu, and buyers when they sign a contract for wireless
> service.
>
> While customers can type in any Web address, the small 10-button
> keypads on mobile phones make that burdensome. The tailored menu
> offered by the carrier has become the preferred destination for most
> Web phone surfers and has given the carrier the power of life and
> death over the content providers.
>
> "It makes a world of difference" whether you are on the carrier's
> menu or not, said Osamu Matsueda, who edits the wireless version of
> Web pages for the Recruit Company, which publishes employment ads and
> provides a service notifying individual job seekers of openings in
> their fields.
>
> Recruit supplies both official and unofficial contents for NTT
> DoCoMo, which has about 800 types of games and services on the menu
> of its i-mode service.
>
> On the cellular phone, "people don't necessarily assume that the
> service would be free," said Tsuyoshi Kuwabara, research director at
> Wit Capital Japan. "And the fact that the carrier collects money for
> the content providers is crucial. Not having a solid way to collect
> money is what makes start-up firms vulnerable."
>
> Another advantage for wireless Web services, Mr. Kuwabara said, is
> that being on the menu of a popular service like i-mode obviates the
> need for advertising, since users often saunter into sites without
> any soliciting.
>
> In a boon to copyright-conscious content owners like record companies
> and publishers, the wireless Web offers protection not known on the
> PC-based Internet. Since the carrier controls the hardware and adopts
> the specifications, users cannot easily duplicate digital data that
> is distributed to cellular terminals.
>
> As promising as the wireless Web in Japan is for entrepreneurs
> selling services, the biggest winners may be the phone companies
> themselves as customers clock up hundreds of extra minutes a month
> while surfing the Net. One entrepreneur estimated that NTT DoCoMo,
> through air-time fees, makes 10 to 20 times what he does from his
> service. DoCoMo also collects 9 percent of what service providers
> charge their customers, for acting as middleman and bill collector.
>
> The entrepreneur said that at some future point, his company hoped to
> negotiate terms for it to receive at least 5 percent of the revenue
> from the calling fees charged to use his service.
>
> Others are also eager to tap this market. Bandai has received dozens
> of requests from European carriers to discuss how they might jointly
> offer a service similar to Charappa outside Japan, said Toshiki
> Hayashi, general manager of the company's network business. Bandai
> has yet to find someone offering suitable terms. "Some have asked for
> 90 percent of the fees we charge users," he said.
>
> Investors may be able to benefit, too. Takeshi Tajima, Internet
> analyst at Wit Capital, estimates that there are already more than
> 100 Japanese companies that supply digital content to cellular
> phones, and many plan to sell shares on the stock market soon.
>
> Some companies with connections to the United States are not waiting
> for initial public offerings. Yahoo Japan recently agreed to acquire
> P.I.M., a Japanese start-up that is developing a personal information
> management system for the cellular phone.
>
> "When it comes to cellular-based services, Japan is advanced," a
> Yahoo Japan spokesman, Koichi Ichikawa, said. "So we are hoping to
> accumulate know-how here and provide it to the rest of the world."
>
> Intel has invested in Mr. Hori's Cybird, though neither company would
> say what Intel paid or how much of the Japanese company it bought.
> Intel was more forthcoming about its strategy: to encourage mobile
> Internet use and thus stimulate demand for microprocessors. For that
> reason, it invests in promising Internet start-ups around the world.
>
> "We drove a tough deal with Intel, and some people might think it
> would be presumptuous of a start-up like us to do so," Mr. Hori said.
> "But we convinced them that it would be a benefit to them since, we
> told them, our company could become as important as them in the future."
---- Adam@KnowNow.ComPosted by Hemos on Friday August 18, @04:44AM from the what-the-hell dept. gribbly writes "Forget emulation -- now you can read classic Atari design docs!" It's all documents from the early 1980s, I think, and looks totally... I dunno. It's like taking a journey into the past.... -- http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/08/17/2044239 -- http://www.willowsp.u-net.com/andy/atari/
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