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You have spent the past day and a half listening to all the exciting possibilities of the new media. My role is to warn you to be very careful in this field; you should not become too excited too early on by the possibilities of the media.
There are some very exciting devices on the horizon. My experience lies in working with the Japanese company, DoCoMo, which launched the I-mode product. In two years, it managed to obtain over 34 million subscribers using data services on mobile phones, many of which were directories based. We are a long way from such a level of penetration in Europe. However, it will come. People are becoming accustomed to new information systems. A major setback occurred when the first WAP services were launched, which proved to be unsatisfactory. People were having too wait long to obtain information. It is now possible to find the information you want very quickly.
The initial killer applications in Japan were ring tones and character downloads, which drove penetration of the devices. More important are the applications that will make the mobile phone an increasingly vital part of our lives, for example, through the use of the mobile phone as a payment device. People are still reluctant to use a number of the services because it costs too much to charge people for them. One of the interesting aspects of the move from Internet to mobile is the fact that people who were used to not paying for anything on the Internet are prepared to pay for services on their mobile.
However, it still costs too much to...
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