Exploring Japan's mobile internet

A typical Japanese day usually starts this way: at 8 in the morning, take out his sharp-phone and use the coupon on his phone to buy breakfast at a nearby McDonald's and pay it directly on the phone. Then use the mobile phone map to see their travel lines, with mobile phone card directly into the subway station ready to go to work. On the way to work for dozens of minutes, he would take out his cell phone and enjoy the very rich service: play a social game provided by the Gree company, download a new Japanese comic in "Ebookjapan" or see what friends are doing in Mixi's mobile social networking site ... It can be said that a Japanese to go out with only a mobile phone, you can meet almost all the basic needs. This developed mobile Internet application environment, Japan has been highly mature as early as 5 years ago. "Over the years, countless American technologists have been traveling in Japan, when they were surprised to see the functionality (and speed) the NTT DoCoMo and Nintendo's wireless devices could offer, they were timid enough to tuck their relatively shabby phones back into their pockets ..." This is the beginning of a mobile Internet report by Morgan Stanley. For a long time at the beginning of this century, Japanese companies, represented by NTT DoCoMo, became the ideal destination for mobile internet practitioners around the world, while Silicon Valley in the United States was only the humble pole of mobile internet development. Since Apple launched its iphone in 2007, the US has quickly overtaken Japan as the world's new engine for mobile internet development. America's Apple, Google, Square and Zynga have been turned into new pilgrimages, and the limelight has far overshadowed Japan. Even today, Japanese citizens still enjoy the best mobile services in the world. Japan's mobile internet originated in China and the United States is very different, Japan is the first mobile Internet, and then develop the Internet. In Japan, the Internet cost of PC Internet was once very expensive, which left a foreshadowing for the development of mobile Internet. Many Japanese do not even have PCs at home, and a mobile phone can satisfy most of his networking needs. As early as October 2001, NTT DoCoMo, Japan's largest telecommunications operator, opened the world's first WCDMA commercial 3G network. In 2002, KDDI, Japan's second-largest mobile telecoms operator, got CDMA2000 's 3G licence. 2005, soft silver mobile obtained 3G license plate. Japan 3G Market "three points world" of the pattern formed by the rapid development of its 3G network. The proportion of 3G users in Japan is still the highest in the world, more than 90%. The developed communications network has allowed Japan's entire mobile internet industry to take off quickly. Including mobile music, cell phone reading, mobile payment, mobile games, mobile advertising, mobile video and other mobile services flourish, and grow a large number of such as Gree, Dena such well-known mobile internet companies. Most of Japan's mobile internet applications take place on the commute. Because of the expensive property, most of the Japanese live in the suburbs,Rely on public transport to commute to work every day, which is the best burst window for mobile internet applications. In 2006, KDDI, Japan's second-largest telecoms operator, invested about 30 million yuan in Gree, a mobile-phone social company that was still unknown, leaving the company's young entrepreneurs Tanaka and able to weather the storm, unexpectedly making a huge difference in the way Japanese commute lives. In 2007, Gree company launched a mobile phone fishing social game, and immediately become people commuting to the fun of an application, many Japanese one months to spend 3500 yen to 7000 yen (about 278 yuan-556 yuan) in the game. In Japan, where the economy has been lackluster in recent years, mobile gaming is called the biggest growth point in Japan's economy in the past 10 years, and the growth of the market is still stunning, with Gree's revenue growth of 190% per cent in the latest quarter, with revenues expected to reach $2.2 billion trillion in fiscal 2012- You know, Facebook, which has 800 million users, currently has only 3.7 billion dollars in revenue, considering that the number of Gree users in the Japanese market is only 28.9 million, and its profitability is staggering. Japanese mobile advertising is also highly developed. Japan electric Qualcomm, Bo newspaper and other large advertising companies and operators joint venture network advertising agency media companies, mobile phone users through these agencies linked to a mobile phone advertiser's website. Japanese mobile phone is a single charge, users do not need to pay for mobile advertising. Similar to PC Web ads, mobile search ads in Japanese mobile ads are also the most important piece. About 40% of Japanese mobile ads in 2011 came from mobile search ads. One of the most noteworthy mobile phone payments in Japan is the mobile payment, which has been introduced by several of Japan's largest carriers, covering almost all of the country's convenience stores, subways, restaurants, and mobile phones in Japan. If you are thirsty on the road, you can use your mobile phone to buy drinks directly on the street vending machine, just choose your favorite drink, and then brush the phone on the sensor to complete the payment, similar commercial applications all over the streets of Japan. Operator's wing in the development of Japan's mobile internet, operators always firmly dominate, others such as mobile phone manufacturers, banks, mobile internet IT companies, are around the core operators to carry out business. Operators and service providers (SPS) and content providers (CP) are divided into proportional, operators play a role in behalf of the charges, the representative mode is the mode–compatible model of NTT DoCoMo. Because the Japanese buy most of the mobile phone is directly from the operator's channel to buy, Japan has very few similar to China's such as the development of the mobile phone social retail channels, so operators have a strong control of mobile phones. The advantage of such a situation is that some key criteria are highly harmonized. For example, the mobile phone payment module will be preset in the mobile phone, and the two-dimensional code recognition software can be preloaded, so these applications quickly spread in Japan,Has greatly facilitated the prosperity of Japan's mobile internet business model. For example, in the case of mobile phone payments, operators in Japan have spent a great deal of money on upstream and downstream companies such as banks and convenience stores to promote their mobile payments smoothly. In April 2005, NTT DoCoMo injected 100 billion yen (945 million U.S. dollars) to obtain a 34% per cent stake in Sumitomo Mitsui Credit card company, and both sides launched the mobile payment business of "ID" brand. In March 2006, NTT DoCoMo also injected 1 billion yen to obtain a stake in Uccard18%, a affiliated company of Mizuho Financial Group. In March 2006, NTT DoCoMo invested 76.9 million of billions of dollars in 2% of Japan's second-largest convenience store Lawson, allowing DoCoMo users to use mobile phones to pay for their money in 100 stores in Lawson. In the mobile internet age, the O2O (offline to offline) model, often brought up by entrepreneurs, has grown rapidly in Japan. A variety of emerging business models based on two-dimensional codes and mobile payments have emerged. The rapid outbreak of social games in Japan is also inextricably linked to the efforts of Japanese operators such as NTT DoCoMo and KDDI, which have built a very sophisticated ecological chain for social games, and 80% of Japanese social games are conveniently paid by operators. In addition, operators set up a unified WAP-based mobile phone web social game format, so that developers and users are easy to access. However, the highly robust system of Japanese operators has greatly stifled the innovative dynamism of handset-makers, which is foreshadowing the impact of the US model in the future of the mobile Internet in Japan. In Japan, operators have their own powerful mobile phone terminal Customization Department, they directly to Sharp, Toshiba, Kyocera, NEC, such as mobile phone manufacturers issued instructions, in the list of details of their needs of the various specifications of the phone. This is a detailed "heinous" list, which details the use of mobile phone materials, design style, the software installed inside. Mobile operators in Japan's mobile phone terminal department, even more than many mobile phone manufacturers have to understand the mobile phone. As a result, handset manufacturers have almost become operators of OEM manufacturers. The operator's strong control of the handset terminal led to a lack of innovation by Japanese handset makers, so Japan has been slow to produce a powerful terminal such as the iphone. For consumers, mobile terminals are the most direct carriers of mobile internet services, so new smart terminals such as the iphone have a huge impact on Japan. After Apple launched the iphone in 2007, NTT DoCoMo, Japan's biggest operator, once wanted to introduce the iphone, but talks with Apple failed. Because Mr. Jobs cleanly rejected the request of NTT DoCoMo to implant a large number of operators ' own services on the iphone. Since then, son led the soft silver first in Japan to introduce the iphone. The revolutionary handset terminals were initially sold in Japan.Not surprised, but after the introduction of better use of iphone and IPhone4, Japan quickly set off a rush to buy the iphone. While the service of a variety of handsets customized by Japanese operators is already quite powerful, smartphones such as the iphone have a much better user experience than traditional Japanese-style handsets. Since then, the three major Japanese operators have introduced a variety of Android smartphones. The last straw. 2011 is considered to be the year of education for smartphone users in Japan, in Japan's major mobile phone stores, the function of mobile phones have been quietly disappeared, almost all of the operators to customize a variety of smartphones. Japan's transition to smartphones is still far slower than in the US. At present, Japan's smartphone penetration rate is around 15%, still significantly lower than the U.S. 35%. The reason for this is that Japan has developed a functional mobile phone has been able to meet most of the needs. While many Japanese mobile internet companies are starting to launch their own smartphone services, they are still essentially the same as functional handsets. Dena, a famous Japanese mobile gaming company, for example, even though Dena has launched its own mobile app client on smartphones, users are still turning to HTML pages, where users actually log on to Dena, and users do not use a gyroscope, GPs and other smart phone core configuration. However, the idea of smartphone openness has become the last straw that has hit Japan's inherently mobile internet model, with mode–compatible operators heavily impacted. In the past, the carrier-led mobile internet model in Japan was essentially a closed mode in which users could not even access the Internet through their mobile phones, and could only accept the services of operators within the mode–compatible. This model has greatly accelerated the development of mobile Internet in Japan, however, because operators control everything, in fact, the phenomenon of monopoly resources, in addition, this model is too complex, far less flexible than Apple's Iphone+app store-style model. When China transplanted the model from Japan to China, the model of the operator's monopoly of resources caused serious internal corruption. Operators rely on huge user resources to gain excess monopoly revenue, while telecom value-added service providers (SPS) often focus on maintaining and mobile operators, rather than actually improving the user experience. In China, for example, some Japanese mobile operators have burst into corruption cases, and mobile operators have benefited from the benefits of telecom value-added service providers (SP), a monopolistic mechanism that has greatly stifled innovation in the industry. In addition, the Internet and Japanese operators control the mobile Internet, the use of the experience is very different, very annoying users. The Japanese-style closure has been a great shock after the rise of the iphone-represented smartphone, as users are free to access the mobile Internet on their mobile phones, or in the App StoreKind of software store in the free download program. Since mobile operators have opened up their mobile internet access to the Internet and downloaded programs, they cannot block the very rich applications created by private developers. For application developers, the speed of submitting applications via Apple's App store or Google's Android harsh is much faster than in the original, and can be updated at any time, the threshold of innovation is greatly reduced, and flexibility is greatly improved, So apps in smartphones quickly became prosperous. In this sense, openness is the trend of mobile internet, even the Japanese operators can provide extremely rich service, also cannot resist the open torrent. If the use of mobile Internet is likened to a variety of sports cars, then the 3G network is a highway, the quality of the highway directly determines how fast the above car can run. As a carrier, its main task should be to try to build the highway, rather than putting the cart before the horse. Although the operator's value-added services have been greatly impacted by the pipeline operation, the basic business of the Japanese operators ' data flow and payment still has strong foundation. Japanese operators, for example, have generally joined the mobile phone payment module, mobile phone TV module, and other basic services such as the carrier's own software store, and the Japanese operators are still firmly in control of the mobile Internet, no matter which brand of car is running on it, It can collect money from it. So the transition to the smartphone age has not brought disaster to Japanese operators; on the contrary, when the pace of innovation in mobile Internet applications has been greatly accelerated, Japanese users have become the biggest beneficiaries, while operators of basic services are facing the "plumbing" situation, is it not the operator's job to fix the pipeline? Japan's experience shows that operators should not put the cart before the horse to compete with private entrepreneurs to do music, reading, games and other business, but should be honest to build the infrastructure, such as improve the quality of network communications, reduce traffic charges, laying a good payment system. Even the highly developed Japanese operators of the data business, at first not to want to earn a lot of money through value-added services, the main purpose of the development of value-added services is to provide users with better services to retain these customers, voice, traffic and other basic business is always the most important business operators. From Japan's experience, the real outbreak of mobile internet, is in the mobile phone internet tariffs significantly reduced after. In Japan, the flow does not cap the broad popularity of monthly packages, greatly promoting the development of mobile Internet. In Japan, the flexible cap-and-pay package uses a two-plane charge, the minimum monthly consumption of only 900 yen, to a consumption after capping, about 4900 yen. People can freely use mobile phone traffic without any restrictions. By contrast, China's mobile-phone internet tariffs still seem too expensive. For example, China Unicom's 3G package, the monthly cost of 186 yuan can use 650MB of traffic, but once the packageRun out of traffic exceeded, its charge up to 0.3 yuan MB. Therefore, many of the more mobile Internet applications, the end of the month when its access to traffic will be slashed, because users worry about generating huge traffic charges, so mobile games, mobile video, mobile phone animation and other consumption of the application of the flow of development in China is relatively slow. Another example is the "O2O" model that many China Mobile internet entrepreneurs have been shouting for years. A few years down in the country has not been much improvement, its essence is the lack of mobile phone payment infrastructure, offline businesses and mobile phone applications to produce advanced business model, it is difficult to use the user's mobile phone to collect real user consumption information , so through the "O2O" to help business precision marketing is likely to become a slogan. So the Chinese mobile internet sports car can run how fast, in the end it depends on how the operators to repair the highway better. Before that, entrepreneurs should not rush to build high-speed sports cars.