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Flipped open, the silvery i-mode phone that Takeshi Natsuno held aloft before an admiring audience at HBS was not much longer than his hand, and about twice as slender.
Held side by side against a standard-issue, Western cell phone, however — for means of comparison — Natsuno could not help but draw a burst of laughter from the assembled students and technology professionals at his Cyberposium keynote address.
Serviceable though it probably was, the black Western phone suddenly appeared clunky, lead-heavy, and impossibly gauche next to its sleeker, minimalist Japanese cousin.
That simple comparison, between an acceptable Western phone and an i-mode — a so-called third-generation wireless device of the kind that is increasingly popular in Japan — set the mood for Natsuno's triumphant yet similarly understated message at HBS.
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| Not too many people want to watch Jurassic Park on this small screen | |
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| — Takeshi Natsuno |
The i-mode is the envy of Western telecoms, since it acts both as a cell phone and as a device that provides easy access to the Internet. As a founder of i-mode, as well as executive director of the i-mode division for the Japanese telecommunications company NTT DoCoMo, Natsuno explained that the reasons for i-mode's success in Japan were, in fact, "very simple."
Normal and ordinary
Since its launch in February 1999, the product has been aimed not at sophisticates but at ordinary people who want "normal, normal, Internet applications," he stressed. Though casual observers of i-mode activity in Japan might conclude that most people who use it are teenagers, he said, in reality the majority of Japanese users are adults. After a semi-slow beginning, when i-mode took six months to land its first one million subscribers, his company now counts just over 19 million subscribers, Natsuno said. (There is a potential base of 58 million cell phone users in Japan, he added, citing statistics from the Japanese Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications.)
Its technological outlook, he emphasized, has also been simple and unadorned from the start. Each i-mode is lightweight compared to Western models, weighing in at around 3.17 ounces (90 grams). The i-mode is compatible with Internet standards such as HTML, http, gif, and Java; so i-mode users can find most any content they need with minimal fuss, from restaurant listings to horoscopes to stock quotes.
The content comes from third parties, and is not created at DoCoMo, Natsuno told the HBS audience. With a small screen the size of a standard compact mirror, subscribers can also download karaoke, scrollable maps, and games such as Space Invaders, Natsuno said. Any user can also download and program a vast array of novelty ring tones for their incoming phone calls, he said, before offering a sample demonstration of several seconds of salsa licks, followed by a church-organ dirge.
Though Natsuno said he expects i-mode to make PlayStation content available starting in March 2001, he also said he does not anticipate providing more than 30 seconds or so of movie clips.
Good things come in small packages, maybe, but being little can also make things a bit complicated at times. "Not too many people want to watch Jurassic Park on this small screen," Natsuno confessed cheerfully.
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