The Six Immutable Laws of Mobile Business

CHAPTER 5

IMMUTABLE LAW NO. 5: MOBILE-SPECIFIC BUSINESS MODELS ARE ESSENTIAL

As mobile sites evolve in Japan, they are combining to create powerful new models of content and services that capture the hearts, minds, and money of Japan’s mobile consumers. This blending had been promoted as Web 2.0 elsewhere, but in Japan, for the mobile platform at least, this was simply the most effective and profitable direction for mobile content and service providers to take after consumer adoption of standalone content and service offerings had matured. While the West proudly proclaimed the advent of Web 2.0, mobile consumers in Japan have been using blended content and service offerings since 1999.

The Web 2.0 concept gave birth to new content and ways of using the Internet: mashups of existing information (e.g., combining pictures, maps, and GPS information), collaborative content creation and distribution, making friends and creating new interest groups, posting homemade videos, and inhabiting and even conducting business in virtual worlds.

Looking back at the Web 2.0 movement, one paradigm shift this produced was to change the consumption of online content from a passive activity to an active one. Patrick Barwise, professor emeritus of management and marketing at the London Business School, calls this “leaning forward” versus “leaning back”. “Lean forward” content has transformed the Internet into a space where users create their own content and make it into a social hub that empowers individuals. ...