Asian Tech Focus:
NTT Mobile Builds
Mini Web Sites
For Cell Phones
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Net Dial-Up Is Unnecessary
In User-Friendly Format
By Robert A. Guth
 
03/29/2000
The Wall Street Journal Europe
Page 28
(Copyright (c) 2000, Dow Jones & Company, Inc.)

TOKYO -- Japan is applying its age-old miniaturization expertise to Web sites, and that could change the way we view the Internet.

Japan's passion for mobile phones is spurring a slew of Web sites that can be displayed on phones that house tiny screens. The sites are built around popular new services that wirelessly connect a handset to the Internet -- such as NTT Mobile Communications Network Inc.'s i-mode. The content on miniature sites runs the gamut, including sports scores, stock trading, banking, weather forecasts, maps, concert tickets, train timetables, recipes and horoscopes. I-mode sites number over 7,000 and are growing at a rate of about 20 a day.

The sites surmount some of the biggest obstacles to broader use of the Internet. "They're making the Internet accessible to people who don't have an interest in PCs, or the budget or space in their homes," says Tim Clark, Tokyo-based president of consultancy TKAI Inc. Plus, he says, "it's bonehead simple."

For now the bulk of the mini sites are available only in Japan, which uses its own mobile technology, but as mobile Internet services arrive in other parts of Asia and Europe, similar sites are expected to spread around the world.

Here's a quick look at a few services offered over NTT DoCoMo's i-mode:

-- Bandai Co. (www.bandai.co.jp), the toy maker of Tamagotchi digital-pet fame, ships a different character every day to subscribers' i-mode phones. Sound silly? Maybe, but that service, called Charappa, and others that Bandai offers over i-mode, boast 1,148,000 subscribers, each paying 100 yen (97 European cents) a month.

-- East Japan Railway Co. (www.jikokuhyo.co.jp) offers train timetables, guides to shopping areas around train stations and a service that automatically notifies users when trains are delayed more than 30 minutes. An additional service called Next Train allows phone users to find the quickest route between train stations.

-- Through its Isize Discount Gourmet (www.isize.com) service, publisher Recruit Co. (www.recruit.co.jp) offers subscribers digital discount coupons that they download and use at a participating restaurants just by showing their phones.

-- DaiichiKosho Co.'s (www.dkkaraoke.co.jp) Karaoke Dam beams music samples and e-mail newsletters to music fans. It also ranks CDs and lets subscribers purchase music online and make reservations at karaoke rooms in Tokyo.

-- Photonet Japan Inc. (www.photonet.co.jp) has a service that digitizes your 35 millimeter or Advanced Photo System pictures, so you can receive and display them on your i-mode phone or send them to other people.

Not all the phone services are about fun and games.

-- Book retailing concern Kinokuniya Co. (www.kinokuniya.co.jp) offers online title searches, bestseller lists, dictionaries and book sales. Japan Airlines sells plane tickets, and Nikkei Business Publications Inc. (www.nikkeibp.cp.jp) has about 20,000 users of its i-mode news service. DLJdirect SFG Securities Inc., the Japanese version of the U.S. online broker, says it is processing an average of 970 trading orders a day via phones -- about 16% of its daily turnover.

The content offered over i-mode basically consists of conventional Web site features rewritten in a modified form of HTML, the technical language that defines how Web sites look and behave. To find the sites, phone users navigate a menu screen with a thumb joystick, or search for sites using any of 10 or so i-mode search engines. Since a cell phone's tiny screen isn't good for full-fledged Web surfing, the services are deliberately kept simple and focused.

The key to the services is that they're easy to connect to and buy from. Subscribers can order things over the phone by entering a four-digit personal identification number. Since the cellular provider already has their personal billing information, subscribers are spared the tedium of entering personal details with each order. Payments are worked into the subscriber's phone bill, eliminating the hassle and security risk of inputting credit-card information. Content providers, meanwhile, don't have to prepare and process thousands of monthly bills.

But the best thing from the subscriber's perspective is that the Internet doesn't play a visible role. Sure, the services run over the Internet Protocol, the language of the Internet, but these technical underpinnings are hidden from the consumer. No messy dial-up (as long as phones can get a signal, subscribers are connected to the Net) and no long Internet addresses to remember (keywords and short menus do the trick).

It isn't an accident that technology takes a back seat here. When the architects of i-mode set out to jumpstart their service, they avoided using technical terms that might scare away potential partners and customers, says Takeshi Natsuno, media director at DoCoMo. "We wanted to attract ordinary people, not techies, so we never used words like `Internet' or `Web.'"

Mr. Natsuno is onto something. When was the last time you picked up a telephone and said you'll make a call on the World Wide Circuit-switched Voice Network?