eranium

7 years of 3G hype in Asia

This tweet of Harald Felgner lead me to a super interesting presentation of Benjamin Joffe about the main findings and learnings of 7 years of 3G service in Japan, Korea and China.

Some weeks ago I hold a speech about the future role of the mobile phone and I came to similar conclusion like Benjamin. Mobile providers need to shift their role from being the facilitator to become content creators. Only when you can provide users with new (and more human services) you will be able to differentiate yourself from the competition that provides generic voice, txt and internet services. In a similar way the iPhone is a great example of how you can differentiate through user experience from the rest of the mobile market. This is of course way much harder for mobile providers that have an intangible product. A tangible product is a very strong asset but there are additional ways how mobile providers can create a remarkable user experience. The fact that the m-commerce market in Japan is bigger than the e-commerce market in China shows what you can achieve if you manage to create new services, educate your target group and develop new revenue models. It seems to me that in Europe we still have a long way to go to educate the target group and create a proper m-advertising market that will further help to finance new services and innovation. But hopefully augmented reality services like Wikitude AR Travel Guide will help to bring the power of the (latest) mobiles in combination with new and human services closer to users and advertisers.

06. January 2009 von Stefan
Categories: Business | Tags: 3g, asia, m-commerce, mobile | 4 comments