Three questions with Mobile Search providers MCN on the big move to Japan
Rating: mushi mushi (supposed to be hello in Japanese – sorry if I have spelt it incorrectly!)
by Bena Roberts
BKI Media and GoMo News have a strong relationship with MCN. MCN is a mobile search company focusing on vertical mobile search (see mobilesearch.net) (which I just realised now has banner ads at the top).
For the past few months the US company has been planning a major move to Japan and I asked MCN’s CEO Marc Bookman and Marketing guru Stephen Burke three questions related to the move.
Q: Why the Big Move to Japan?
A: Japan is the focal point for the global mobile industry in many regards. Certainly for Wireless Internet traffic Japan has proven to be both a service innovator and traffic volume leader. It has also developed the most robust ecosystem around mobile marketing and advertising, and because of its maturity and complexity is proving to be a great market for MCN’s federated search and federated advertising solutions. Also, MCN has strong customer partnerships in Japan, a number of Japanese institutional investors and recently launched a data center in Tokyo that serves our customers not only in Japan but also in China and Thailand.
Q: Is the environment more advanced there?
A: In many ways, yes. While there are certainly strong innovators in Europe, North America, and SE Asia, Japan offers a combination of network, device, services, and monetization that is unsurpassed. Mobile data services, including advertising is, a mass market offering here right now, and where else in the world are 80,000,000+ people a week accessing high value Wireless Web services with the frequency and intensity of Japanese mobile subscribers?
FYI here is a short market summary published a few weeks ago:
According to a recent report released by the Mobile Content Forum (MCF), Japan’s largest independent mobile industry trade organization, Japan’s mobile content marketplace in 2006 was worth some 928.5 billion yen, an increase of 129% over the previous year. Broken down by category, the mobile content market (i.e., transactions for fee-based content) comprised
366.1 billion, marking an increase of 116% over 2005. Mobile commerce (including hard goods, services, and transactions) made up 562.4 billion yen, an increase of 138% over the previous year, marking definite growth in the mobile market overall, and confirming a growth trend that is expected to break the trillion yen mark in 2007.
Q: Do you still see MCN as a global player or are you carving a niche in the radio appli and music market?
A: We definitely are a global player, with deployments in Finland, Thailand, and Japan and more to come, and believe our unique technology will enable us to scale wider and deeper than our competitors. While we are pleased to be doing so well with vertical search in particularly active categories like music, our ability to rapidly deploy horizontal solutions across any number of categories and local content providers is also proving to be very attractive to mobile operators. Also, our experience in Japan is proving valuable to our customers and prospects outside Japan , because mobile operators around the world know how demanding and active the mobile market is here.
**Please note that MCN’s Jay Brownfield and Michael Crane are still in the US.
Related News:
- Yahoo! Japan deploys white label mobile search from MCN Mobile Content Networks
- MCN launches mobile search services in Finland with Elisa
- Mobile Advertising: Chat with Marc Bookman and Tom Viswat MCN
- MCN signs up for mobile search services with True Phone in Thailand
- MCN offers mobile search in Turkey with Avea
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