Imagine a place where you can pay for taxis, train fares, concert tickets, parking meters, food, drink and clothing simply by holding out your mobile phone.
Now, Imagine a place where you can also check in at airports, hotels and hire cars simply by holding out your mobile phone.
Now, imagine a place where you can transfer money from your savings account to pay your gas, electricity, tax and rates bills simply by scanning the bill with your mobile phone.
Now, imagine a place where you can scan the bar code of any item in the shop and check for competitive pricing.
Now, imagine a place where while you are looking at a billboard you can also purchase and collect your concert eTicket simply by scanning the QR Code.
Now imagine how far away that place is?
5, 10 15 years away?
Actually you’ll be surprised just how close and affordable it is. All you need to do is book yourself a flight to Japan and you can be living the dream today.
As RazorFish reported in their 2008 Digital Outlook Report [PDF] …
“Only one ride on the Tokyo subway is necessary to understand how obsessed the Japanese are with mobile phones. The majority of passengers are either quietly looking at their screens or ferociously typing by thumb. 83% of phones in Japan are Web-capable and mobile activity is dominated by Web browsing and e-mail—more than 70% of users spend 10 minutes or less with voice functions daily. The market for mobile content (downloadable songs, games, etc.) combined with the mobile commerce market exceeded $10 billion in 2007. This makes Japan the perfect market to look at when trying to discern the possibilities of the mobile Web.”
And Japan isn’t the only country where this revolution has already happened. As the New York Times explains In South Korea, All of Life Is Mobile.
“If I leave my wallet at home, I may not notice it for the whole day,” said Ms. Kim, 21. “But if I lose my cellphone, my life will start stumbling right there in the subway.”
You don’t have to imagine the future of the Mobile Web. It is already here in Japan and South Korea.
As the ITIF report released this week observes. It is the U.S. that now Lags World Leaders.
“In a small, but growing number of nations the mobile phone has evolved from a simple personal communications device to become both a platform for commerce and an indispensable part of a “lifestyle infrastructure” that enhances personal productivity, manages financial transactions, and makes life far more convenient and efficient. Indeed, around the world, consumers can use mobile phones as electronic wallets to pay for public transit, to check in at airline gates, and to make purchases from merchants, kiosks, and vendors. But not in the United States, which lags behind world leaders in leveraging the mobile phone as a platform to effect commercial transactions. The result is lagging productivity and reduced convenience for America and Americans.” (Download the complete ITIF [PDF] Report)
Japan continues to define the future of the MobCon landscape. They have already brought to market and commercialised all the ideas that the investors in Wall St and the Silicon Valley are now getting so excited about.
Today the only question you need to ask yourself is will you adopt the policy of a “Late to Market ME2″ and follow the Japanese roadmap, or will you wait a little longer, and catch the next disruptive wave of the information revolution in a bold bid for outright market leadership?
What ever road you choose it’s time to shelve the redundant Mobile Media, Mobile Applications and Mobile Relationships marketing strategies.
It’s time to work out how you are going to plug into your customer’s Mobile Life. Otherwise it may not be you who is profiting in the future from the everyday discoveries, transactions and exchanges of their increasingly fragmented mobile lives.
Further Reading:
- How Japan leveraged the MobCon to jump past Silicon Valley
- Is this the day Silicon Valley discovers it is 10 years behind Japan in pursuit of the MobCon?
- Mastercard shows its hand in the high stakes game of Mobile Payments
- A Telco you can Bank on?
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Posted on November 21, 2009
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