Edited by author 06-30-2001 11:01 PM
Some of you may be familiar with this.. in Japan, the mobile internet dominates the overall internet accessing market. Already, 35 million, out of the total 130 million or so Japanese population, tote one of these internet (html/http) capable web phones. And the company that dominates the mobile internet market is NTT Docomo. Docomo controls the "preferred" list of mobile sites, through which you can provide micropayment services to your customer. The micro-payments simply appear on customer's monthly mobile phone bill. You can't use this very convenient billing method unless Docomo approves your site. Talk about controlling the internet! Docomo has complete say as to who can be listed on this preferred list of sites. Docomo takes a 9% cut of all the micropayments. NTT Docomo's model is very profitable. Is MS heading in this direction? Surely they're entrigued by the model NTT Docomo has implimented. Relatively speaking, NTT seems to be a larger monopoly than even ATT ever was. But it's a model that has fueled their internet economy and content generation. Again, the Japanese have taken an off-the-shelf technology (internet/http/ip/html), and made it extremely easy for the main street customer to use and enjoy. I look forward to the day I can enjoy an i-mode phone once again. Will we all be paying through NTT's version of "passport"?

http://www.nttdocomo.com