World Telecommunication Day 1999 |
People chattering away on mobile phones in restaurants and on street corners is hardly new. What is new in Japan is seeing people peering intently at mobile phone displays, laboriously punching the keypads and then peering some more. People still use their cellphones for chatting, of course, but they are increasingly becoming tools for checking stock market news, transferring money and ordering concert tickets.
Supporting most of this mobile financial activity is the new I-mode service of NTT Mobile Communications Network Inc. (NTT DoCoMo). In addition to providing normal voice telephony, I-mode phones can connect to an I-mode server via a wireless packet data transmission network. The I-mode server, in turn, connects to the Internet or directly to bank and brokerage servers. The phones have a simple text browser, slightly larger-than-usual displays and special function keys that enable users to move through text-based user interfaces.
Kei-ichi Enoki, director of Gateway Business Development for NTT DoCoMo, explains that I-mode fills a need in Japan's communications market. Personal computers have not been adopted by ordinary households to anywhere near the extent they have in the United States and Europe. In Japan, home PC users are still primarily hard-core computer hobbyists. On the other hand, two out of every five Japanese own portable phones, and they are ubiquitous among the more affluent young and middle-aged consumers most likely to be interested in financial services. ''There is a good match between cellphone users and the consumers service providers want to reach,'' Mr. Enoki says.
Launched last February, I-mode had attracted over 1 million subscribers by the end of July, with the number of new subscribers increasing by about 80,000 per week.
So far, 46 banks are connected to the I-mode network. Services vary slightly from bank to bank, but customers can generally open accounts, check account balances, transfer money between accounts and pay bills.
Many of the banks offer similar services via PC connections through the Internet. But Mr. Enoki has been proven right. Sakura Bank, for example, reports that in July, over 27,400 customers made use of their I-mode link. During the same month, only 17,700 customers used their PCs to access on-line services.
Mitsuhiro Sometani, an official in Sumitomo Bank Ltd.'s remote banking division, says that while simply checking account balances generates the most traffic, surveys indicate that the service people value most is the interbank transfers that allow them to pay bills. Those subscribers using the bank's I-mode link make two such transfers a month on average.
Mr. Enoki says that the banking service is one of the most important I-mode selling points, but in terms of daily hits, on-line banking ranks far below such I-mode services as news, weather reports and games. ''Most people don't check their account balances every day,'' he says.
One thing that many people do want to check every day is stocks. Two brokerages are currently offering regularly updated information on overall market trends and quotes on individual stocks. Customers with accounts can issue buy and sell orders via I-mode.
Makoto Hirao, an official with Daiwa Securities Ltd. in Tokyo, says the company currently has 5,000 customers per month using its I-mode link. In addition to convenience, Mr. Hirao emphasizes that the I-mode service is more secure than Internet-based access because of the dedicated, secure connection between the brokerage and the I-mode server.
Credit card companies also use I-mode to allow customers to check their account balances.
NTT DoCoMo plans even bigger things for I-mode. More graphics and moving images will be possible with the increased bandwidth of next-generation mobile phone technology.
Mr. Enoki expects banks, brokerages and credit card companies to be offering an ever-increasing menu of mobile financial services.
Dennis Normile