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Enjoy it!

I also feel surprised that I was quite enjoyable during the presentation. I think the biggest reason is that I heard a lot of different ideas from my audience. I have confidence that I am familiar with my topic – consumer adoption of mobile TV, however my audience gave me different thoughts and arguments when they answered my discussion questions. For example, I didn’t think about the consumption of battery will be the concerns when users want to use mobile TV services. Also, I didn’t consider the “live TV programs” will be the attractive content to consumers, at least some of my audience today. The interactive conversation between me and audience really completed the whole presentation. It’s a wonderful experience to me and I hope I can apply this experience to my future presentations and make them better!

The purpose of this study is to investigate what factors influence consumer adoption of mobile TV service[1]. The authors used different but related theories to construct the theoretical framework for this paper. The theories include technology acceptance model (TAM), and which is extended with consumer’s flow experience and media content. The paper chooses Mobile TV users in South Korea as their subjects due to the pervasiveness of Mobile TV in this country. The methodology of the study is doing a web-based survey by posting it on the board of online communities where users exchange information about Digital Multimedia Broadcasting (DMB) to find appropriate target audience.

The core theory “TAM” indicates that people will be intent to accept technology based on two beliefs: perceived usefulness (PU) and perceived ease of use (PEOU). Hence, the authors assumed three hypotheses by using the TAM theory:

1. PU will have positive impact on users’ intention to use mobile TV.

    (PU example: Use of mobile TV can increase the quality of my life/work.)

2. PEOU will have positive impact on users’ intention to use mobile TV.

    (PEOU example: Learning to use mobile TV would be easy for me.)

3. PEOU will have positive impact on PU.

The authors also made other hypotheses when discussing about extended theories of TAM like consumer’s flow experience and media content. There are lots of different flow experience concepts, however this paper only focuses on cognitive concentration part of flow experience. About the content, the authors think it is a potential antecedent of cognitive concentration and PU. The content provides important characters such as timeliness, sufficiency and relevance of information. For Mobile TV, the content should have huge possibility. Therefore, the authors have four hypotheses about this part:

1. Cognitive concentration will have positive impact on PU.

    (Cognitive concentration example: During using mobile TV, I am deeply engrossed in the activity.)

2. Cognitive concentration will have positive impact on PEOU.

3. Content will have positive impact on consumer’s cognitive concentration.

    (Content example: Mobile TV provides up-to-date contents)

4. Content will have positive impact on PU.

The result of the study proved the strong support to all hypotheses except the “PEOU will have positive impact of PU”. The paper explained that it is because most of their survey participants are all mobile devices early adopters. Hence, the perceived ease of use maybe not a big deal to them. Overall, the study indicated that “content” is an important factor to effect consumer adoption of mobile TV.

From my point of view, it sounds reasonable that the content of mobile TV will positive effect consumers’ perceived usefulness and cognitive concentration driving behavioral intention. Take myself as an example; I have tried to watch Korean drama by using my cell phone because I am obsessed by it and want to utilize my commute time to watch television on my cell phone. It is clear that the Korean drama drives my intention to use mobile TV because I expect it will satisfied my needs and also I will be concentrated on it due to it’s the content I like.

Although the paper indicated lots of limitation in the study such as lack of cultural difference (all Korean participants), male is much more than female and didn’t include the technology attribute (small screen of cell phones)…etc, I think the paper still provided the good insight about the adoption issue of mobile TV and found out the importance of “content” on mobile TV which is the part that usually ignored by other studies.

Discussion

1. Have you ever used mobile TV service? If yes, please describe why did you use it and in what circumstance?
2. If not, please think about what reason will be the most attractive factor for you to use mobile TV?
3. Compare perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use, which one do you think is more important of consumer adoption of mobile TV? Why?
4. What kind of content of Mobile TV do you want to have? Entertainment only or informative information?
5. Does there any reason hesitate you to use mobile TV? Price? Signals? 

Do you remember this song? The sesame street theme song started singing in my mind when I was reading the article “The Media Monopoly” these days. The song should be familiar to the people in United States because it is a beloved household TV program broadcasted by public televisions for children. To me, it is also a childhood memory because it had been broadcasted in Taiwan. I love the characters and even bought some lovely toys of the show. That’s why I am truly connected to the feeling that people felt angry when they heard about the budget cut of the public televisions. They love Sesame Street as me and they don’t want to lose it.

The article mentioned that there is a fallacy of “two-model choice” in current American society. For them, the media will be classified to “socialism” or “dictatorial government propaganda” if any tax support is involved. On the other side, the only model accepted in America is that media is totally commercial and therefore it is automatically “free and democratic”. That’s why the non-commercial television programs in US are rare. However, the reality is that there is lots of countries have free and democratic public broadcastings and also have tax support involved. The citizens have lots of chances and rights to access the public broadcasting systems as well. But American society seems to keep its silence on this parallel way and still stuck on the “two-model choice” fallacy. Hence, there is not many shows like Sesame Street have educational meaning in United States now. Most of the shows are just for entertainment due to the purpose of commercial media is “making money”.

 So why is the public broadcasting so important to people? The article indicated a lot of serious phenomenon in current US society and public broadcasting should have power to influence people on those significant issues, unfortunately it didn’t. For example, the problems of huge health care expense when people need emergency room, the problems of urgent needs on increasing funding for public education such as libraries and other supports for educational activities…etc. The public broadcasting should devote its value to discover these public subjects and provide the accurate information to public. However, now America is full of commercial televisions and in order to catch audiences’ eyeballs, the shows they offer to public usually include many violence and exaggerating stories. This situation caused a serious result is that people don’t know what important public projects are happening in the country. If people aren’t aware of the important issues, how can they execute their votes for the public decisions correctly? To be honest, this has been existed in my mind for a long time since I have a right to vote in Taiwan. I always wonder how can I vote a good and responsible candidate to solve the public issues under the condition that I even don’t understand what’s happening in the country? The broadcasting condition in Taiwan is kind of similar to US. Commercial televisions or radios and usually controlled by corporates who have their own political position. Hence, the news and talk shows in different television programs often have opposite aspects and explanations to the same fact. How can I tell which one is more true to the fact? There is only one public television channel in Taiwan and usually is one of my favorite news channels due to its unbiased and objective reports. However, I still think the information resource is really scarce and make me feel hard to contribute my knowledge and passion to improve my country.

 I have so many reflections to this article and resonate to lots of points of view in the arguments. I know it’s hard to find a balance between profit and public benefit when corporates are running the broadcasting business. However, I still have expectation in the future is that people can point out the good direction for the media. People can actually let media know who is the owner of them. Not corporates, but the audience the corporates have.

Reference
MarshalGrover. (2009) “Sesame Street Theme” 1998-2001. Retrieved from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LXqMzmFSX_4

I found two mobile banners on the same mobile web site called US magazine. One banner looks like a campaign for sweepstakes event.

I was curious about the campaign so I clicked it immediately. However the unfit landing page made me feel confused and was not sure about if I should go through the process due to some words is missing.

Unfit landing page with truncate website let people feel confused about what the content it is. Also there is a lot of empty place under the content. It is obviously the campaign website have some bugs for the mobile phone screen.

On the opposite side, I found a good mobile landing page when continue broswing US magazine mobile site. The banner is promoting the famous female maintenance brand “Olay”. The wording on the banner is very clever and attractive. “Oily Screen? Tap and clean.”

After clicking the banner, I felt impressed by its clean and clear landing page. The landing page has very attractive key image and big font of slogan on the top. It also has two big buttons on the bottom. After clicking one of the buttons, it was linked to a page which has precise product list, beautiful product image and titles.

I have told the importance of landing page when doing the mobile marketing campaign in my mid-term individual presentation. Landing page is a page that let campaign to communicate with their audience clearly  due to the banner only can put few words on it.

These two different mobile landing pages proved my point again. Good landing page will make you feel enjoyable and want to look for more information; bad landing page make you feel confused and lose the interest in it. In my opinion, I believe that a successful landing page of mobile campaign should have at least two attributes: simple and clear. Because mobile phone screen is small, and too complicated design only make users feel dizzy, not happy.

Introduction

When talking about mobile phone market and development, it is inevitable for not mentioning Japan, a very unique country of mobile phone market. According to “The comScore 2010 Mobile Year in Review” (Radwanick, 2011), “the Japan market is perhaps one of the most mature and sophisticated mobile market in the world with mobile audience accustomed to using mobile media regularly.” (p.19) Compare to U.S. and EU, the top three mobile handset in Japan is quite different. They are Sharp, Panasonic and Fujitsu and with one thing in common: they are all made in Japan. Why are Japanese so faithful to their domestically manufactured phones? Is there any government policies or Japanese cultural influences on this unique phenomenon? Or do the mobile web services in Japan influence their user behavior on buying mobile phones?

Three most important developments in my timeline:

The research will discuss from past, present and future aspect to discover what are the main reasons to mold this unique mobile phone environment in Japan and what is the future of it.

Nineteenth-century ~ 1999

From past, the research will briefly introduce the origins of mobile phone invention – telegraph and telephone history in Japan and try to find out how did government policies from nineteenth-century telegraph impact the twentieth-century mobile phone market.

1999 ~ 2007

For current situation, in order to understand how different of mobile phone market in Japan, the research will discuss the unique mobile service and network, i-Mode, in Japan to discover the reasons.

2007~Future

For the future, the research wants to discuss about what impact will happen to Japan’s mobile phone market after smartphones, especially iPhone has been invented in 2007.

The course theories best explain what has happened/might happen in my project

 Self-sufficient telecommunication Country (Nineteen-century ~ 1999)

In 1870, Japanese government first got the information about the new technology “telegraph” from western countries and immediately realized that Japan needed to build the same telecommunication infrastructure to increase their national power. However, Japanese government didn’t want to rely on western technology only, they had longer plan and determination to build their own telecommunication system. Hence, they introduced the technology of telegraph from western and learned the skills from foreign engineers. Not only learning from western, Japanese government also invested lots of money and resources to establish the firm called “Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Company”(NTT) to control all the business related to the telegraph infrastructure. (Anchordoguy, 2001) In this part, the research will use Christensen’s theory “The important nonmarket context for innovation” to discuss about the role of Japanese government in the telegraph and telephone technology development process and how this management influence the telecommunication environment for the current mobile phone market.

Unique mobile phone market (1999 ~ 2007)

After NTT company was established by government in nineteen-century; it has played a very important role in Japan’s telecommunication industry. From telegraph to telephone, with strong support from government it continues developing its telecom business. For example, NTT launched the first commercially automated cellular network (the 1G generation) in the world in 1979. (Wikipedia, 2011) Furthermore, NTT established its subsidiary company called NTT DoCoMo in 1992 and launched its first cellular phone in the next year. However, the most important achievement of NTT DoCoMo is that it launched “i-Mode” service on mobile phone. “i-Mode” is a comprehensive mobile Internet service including restaurant information and booking, person to person emails…etc. While United States and European countries still struggled in the fragmented set of mobile phone network, service standard and slow adoption of Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) for wireless Internet uses, i-Mode already dominates the Japanese mobile phone market and it has nearly 63 million users until 2003. (Barnes & Huff, 2003) The research will discuss this interesting “i-Mode service” by using the theory of Roger’s five steps of adoption to find out how Japanese adopted this service on their mobile phone and what reasons make i-Mode so popular in Japan. On the other hand, the paper will also talk about Metcalfe’s Law of i-Mode. It’s obviously that more and more people use i-Mode, the service grows faster and bigger. At this situation, “network effect” plays the crucial role than handset itself.

Will iPhone take over Japan’s mobile phone market? (2007~ future)

There is no doubt that iPhone has dramatically changed the users behaviors of mobile phone since it launched in 2007 by Apple. Hence, what impacts have happened after 2007 in Japan’s mobile phone market becomes very interesting to discuss. According to the article “Why the Japanese hate iPhone” in 2008, iPhone was not popular in Japan in the beginning because of its low quality camera and unfashionable design (compare to Japanese’s cell phones) and even was offered by free handset with carrier’s package. (Chen, 2008) However, the latest report “Smartphone may transform Japan’s mobile market” in 2010 indicated that there is a trend that mobile market in Japan is gradually changing now. The report mentioned that smartphone such as iPhone and Android phone recently lead the change in Japan’s mobile market. Along with the Softbank, the rival of NTT DoCoMo, is going to provide the smartphone-based services for Japanese users in coming months and it should be a big impact to current mobile market. (Kumar, 2010) Hence, the research will use another Roger’s theory “How ideas diffuse” to discuss about the iPhone usage in Japan. Now, the iPhone penetration rate in Japan is only around 3% and should be in “innovators” period. However, will it possible to take over the Japan’s mobile market with its huge potential? What will be the “Chasm” for iPhone between early adopters and early majority in Japan? On the flip side, the Japanese manufacture’s mobile phones seems already reach the third decade of the Fidler’s theory “30 year rule” which is “standardization” period. What will the fate of Japanese manufactured mobile phones in the future?

How has my timeline changed?

From my preliminary proposal, I didn’t set up very clear timeline of my project because it is too board and tried to compare Japan and United States. Now, I narrow down the project scope to focus on Japan mobile market and it has clearer timeline as following:

Past – from mid-nineteenth-century to 1999 (i-Mode launched)

Present – from 1999 to 2007 (the first iPhone came out)

Future – from 2007 to the future 

Reference

Anchordoguy, M. (2001) Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Company (NTT) and the Building of a Telecommunications Industry in Japan. The Business History Review, Vol. 75, No. 3 , pp. 507-541. The President and Fellows of Harvard College.

Barnes, S. J. & Huff, S, L. (2003) Rising Sun: i-Mode and the wireless Internet. Communication of the ACM, Vol. 46, No. 11, pp.79-84. New Zealand, Victoria University of Wellington

Chen, B. X. (2009) Why the Japanese hate iPhone. Retrieved from http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2009/02/why-the-iphone/

Ishii, K. (2004) Internet use via mobile phone in Japan. Telecommunications Policy, 28 ,pp.43–58. Japan, University of Tsukuba.

Jeffrey L. F. (2006) Mobile Phone Industry: A Microcosm of Deregulation, Globalization, and Technological Change in the Japanese Economy. Tokyo, Hitotsubashi University.

Kumar, S. (2004) Mobile communications: global trends in the 21st century. Int. J. Mobile Communication, Vol. 2, No. 1, pp.67-84. Minneapolis, College of Business, University of St. Thomas.

Kumar, V. P. (2010) Smartphone may transform Japan’s mobile market. Retrieved from http://www.marketwatch.com/story/smartphones-may-transform-japans-mobile-market-2010-02-25

Radwanick, S. (2011) The comScore 2010 Mobile Year in Review.

Wikipedia (2011) History of mobile phone. Retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_mobile_phones#First_generation:_Cellular_networks

I wondered does this banner promote the Bing search engine? Or MSN mobile website? So I clicked the banner then I saw the whole page introduced how to use your mobile phone go the Bing homepage. So it is promoting the Bing search engine.

The Bing introduction of mobile website

This page provide users two different ways to go to “Bing” mobile website. First one you can directly type m.bing.com in your mobile web browser, second one you can enter you phone numbers and it will send you a text link. However, the second one may charge the text fee from you. Hence I chose the first one method: to type the URL by myself.

After entering the URL, the homepage of m.bing.com is pretty neat and simple. Background image is a beautiful ocean view. And there are only three words on the bottom: “images”, “maps” and “local”. My intuition told me I should use my fingers to swipe the screen from bottom to the top and there should be more words under the “local”. Indeed, there are totally eleven words on the screen. However, I was wondering that is that possible every user knows how to manipulate this interface design?

Then I followed the introduction on the webpage that ask users to click “deals” to make great decision on different deals.

It showed up a page which asked me to choose my location and it will help to find great deals on restaurants, entertainment and more. So I chose “Seattle, WA” and saw the page below.

The result page showed the deals around your location. The webpage mentioned that they cooperate with Groupon, Living Social and Restaurant.Com. I think to show up the result of deals near by your location is very reasonable and convenient, but unfortunately I am not a shopping girl so I actually don’t have lots interesting to click those deals.

Beside this mobile website, I also try to link m.bing.com/download I found on the website to download the apps of Bing. For some reason, the page doesn’t exist and I don’t know why. So I didn’t have chance to test their apps.

Overall, the Bing mobile website is quite clear and easy to use. Although I was a little confused in the beginning about the homepage due to I only saw three words and was not very sure if those words are linkable or not. I am not sure if I will continue using the Bing search engine because my Android phone always show the Google search engine page for me. That’s why it is Android phone though. However, at least, now I know there is a Bing search feature for mobile phone and so do you.

Since the electric current usage of transmitting message have been found by scientists two centuries ago, human beings keep changing the communication ways in the world. From telegraphs, telephones to wireless radios, televisions and computers with Internet. These remarkable inventions dramatically changed people’s life style and whole society. The speedy, liberally communication way makes the “globe” become a flat surface.  Among these inventions, I feel really amazed about the similarities between telegraph and Internet. Long distance telegraph message usually transferred by several telegraph offices to arrive its destination.  So does e-mail. When people sent out e-mail, it usually takes a random route by using different “IP address” of each computer to transfer from one to another and then arrive to the exactly destination. In my own opinion, it’s clear that people have been improving their society and living by imitating the ancestors’ experiences and logics, and it usually works well.

On the other hand, I also noticed an interesting point about how people treat the old inventions when new technologies are coming out. It makes me feel surprise that not every old invention would be weeded out by people, even though people start welcoming the new one, for example, the walkie-talkie and cell phones. The walkie-talkie is a handset that using wireless radio technology to connect with others’ handsets. Like cell phone, you can talk with others by using walkie-talkie but in a short or limited distance.  As my observation, many taxi drivers really like to use walkie-talkie to communicate with other drivers or the colleagues in Company. Why the taxi drivers don’t use cell phone? Cell phone has the same function as walkie-talkie and even more suitable in long distance. From my own perspective, I think walkie-talkie already fulfill the needs of taxi drivers and it has some pros that cell phone doesn’t have, for example, cheaper expense or simpler features. Hence, I believe that even the new inventions are always coming up rapidly, as long as old ones could find its specific users, they still have lots of chances in the market.

The last meaningful point I realized in the article is that it mentioned many inventions were actually the convergence of other earlier technologies; for example, television and facsimile. Just like the relationship between telegraph and Internet, the combination of telegraphy and photography gave birth to television and facsimile. Also, after invention of computer and Internet, people now start using “Internet” to watch “television programs” by their PC or even mobile phone! I think it’s another convergence of two different technologies when they met to each other. It’s hard to say if the television will be weed out or not due to the walkie-talkie example. As long as there is a need for specific people, there is hard to say.

The reading took me back from the past to current situation of telegraphy once again. Although I have many thoughts, the most important take away this time is: Without the inventions by earlier ancestors, there is no today’s success.

It said “Angry Birds Rio, Now Available! amazon appstore”. I was curious about how to download the angry birds in amazon appstore? So I clicked it and then here are the pages I went through.

The first page is an angry birds product information in amazon layout. The right top corner appeared the amazon home and cart .

In the middle of first page, there is a price “$0.99″ for this angry birds app.  There are two options: 1. Buy from Amazon Appstore 2. Add to wish list. And it also reminds you that you may need to install Amazon Appstore first in order to buy this app.

At the end of the page, there are some familiar links we often see in amazon website.

Actually I don’t know where I can install the Amazon Appstore first. I just clicked the option 1 “Buy From Amazon Appstore” to see what will happen. The I saw this page.

There is a “download now” button for downloading Amazon Apps. OK, it seems that it directed me to download the Amazon Appstore apps first. Also beside the download button, there are three reminders about after downloading this app.

1. Tap “Settings”

2. Check the box to allow “Unknown” sources (the source is Amazon), then tap “OK”

3. Tap the back button twice to return to this page, then tap “Download now” again.

Indeed, I have to follow the three reminders above to install my Amazon Appstore apps because I saw this page. It said “For security, your phone is set to block installation of applications not obtained from Android Market.”

Then I followed the reminder to tap “setting”, and checked the box to allow “Unknown” sources. I should continue select “OK”, however I decided not to do it due to I saw this alert.

The alert is “your phone and personal data are more vulnerable to attack by appellations from unknown sources. You agree that you are solely responsible for any damage to your phone or loss of data that may result from using these applications.” OK, this is scary enough. I don’t want to be responsible for this since I don’t necessary need to download the app from Amazon Appstore. At least now there is no need for it. So I stopped the process.

I still feel confused about this Amazon Appstores apps. It sounds like users need to download this apps first then they can purchase the digital products from Amazon on their Android phone. I am not sure if it is compelling to users who already get used to download apps from Android market. Also, the Angry Birds Rio version is free in Android market, (of course I already had this one…) why bother to spend $0.99 to buy it? The alert makes me feel uncomfortable as well, but I guess this is a standard process when you download some apps that Android phone may not have capability to be responsible for the security issues.

In conclusion, the process of first time to download an apps in the Amazon Appstores seems not to be difficult, however if there is a security issue, there is a barrier for me.

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