Motoko’s weblog

One of the latest news items in Japan’s mobile market is that the iPhone will be available through Softbank in July, which means that Yahoo is set as the official search engine for iPhone in Japan. Yahoo’s search team has developed iPhone/iPod Touch search services, which has functions to switch between iPhone/iPod Touch screen and PC screen. The functions on iPhone/iPod Touch screen have been adjusted to provide better usability and the search experiences. It also has image search function.

The mobile Internet and mobile search started back in the ’90s in Japan when Japan’s NTT DoCoMo created “i-Mode” service, which was to provide a mobile Internet browser and the connection to view mobile websites from DoCoMo’s cell phone. The mobile Internet market has grown rapidly in Japan since then, and now the stats show that there are more access to Internet from mobile than from PC in Japan. Many Japanese conduct all of their Internet activities from mobile! Continue Reading »

When we talk about Internet users, I don’t think that people in 50s and up are what first comes to our mind, unless of course, that’s what your target market. I thought it was very interesting when I read a report by NetRatings showed that the 50′s and up demographic made 23% of Internet population in Japan, and it had higher growth than the average Internet population growth. For example, number of users in 60+ increased 22% during the past 12 months.

But we rarely see them on Social Networking Sites or blogs. Where do they go and what are they doing on Internet?

NetRatings research shows that “finance” related sites and “news” related sites are very popular among 50+ people in Japan. They also like to visit travel related sites. Continue Reading »

People have been saying that “mobile is the next big thing” for a while in US, but mobile has been “happening” in Japan for years and continues to grow.

According to Seed Planning’s report, the mobile advertising will become 100 billion yen (US$1 billion) market in 2008 in Japan from 81.5 billion yen in 2007. The number includes all of the advertising activities on mobile platform such as banner ads, affiliate ads, search paid ads and mailing ads. If it continues to grow at the same pace, the mobile advertising market will reach 250 billion yen by 2011.

The similar advertising is available for both PC version of the web and mobile version of the web. However, what works on PC market doesn’t always work the best with mobile market. For example, Continue Reading »