Yahoo Japan has opened a version of its shopping portal for cell phone Internet users, the company said Monday. Mobile Yahoo Shopping can be accessed from all three of Japan's major wireless Internet services and brings together about 2,000 merchants and 2 million items for sale, according to estimates from Yahoo. Like the company's PC shopping site, users of the cell phone version can search or browse for goods and retailers by category. Online shopping from PCs is popular in Japan, but it has yet to take off in a big way from mobile devices. In a recent government survey, 89 percent of respondents said they shopped online using their PC, versus only 18 percent who shopped online with a cell phone. Satisfaction levels with online shopping are much lower among cell phone users, with ease of use and security among the biggest complaints.

[InfoWorld: Top News]
7:27:49 PM    comment   

I've been doing some early thinking about the supply-side implications of Chris Anderson's fascinating long-tail model, particularly for the economics and strategies of retailers and distributors. I've been waiting for Chris to discuss long-tail markets that lie outside digital goods, but it looks like that he's going to keep that material under wraps until his book comes out. (Let's call this Chris's thong strategy: Always keep a little of the tail covered. On second thought, let's not call it that.)

I'm particularly interested in looking at past examples of long tails to see what can be learned about their evolution and the way the Internet affected their economics. Here's the best example I've come up with: auto parts. Having briefly owned an ancient, obscure and altogether unreliable model of Renault station wagon after college, I can tell you that the auto-parts industry has always been pretty damn good at managing a very long tail of parts. I haven't yet looked into the structure of that industry, but it must be fascinating, with distributors and retailers selling a mix of original-equipment, aftermarket, and junkyard parts and being able to find and deliver even the rarest of them quickly to service stations and private owners.

Today, of course, you can go to any of dozens of sites on the web and easily search for pretty much any part. Moreover, you can do what you weren't able to do before: compare prices. When I had to replace a section of the gas line for that Renault, I took what I was given and paid what I was told. I pretty much had no other choice. That's all changed. Parts buyers have lots more information now. So here's my hypothesis: the arrival of the Internet has put pricing pressure on parts sellers, which is eroding profit margins, which is or will lead to a consolidation of the industry. (It seems, in fact, that a lot of the online parts sellers all use the same catalog, which may mean they're little more than storefronts for the same distributor.) More broadly: When information on the long tails of physical goods becomes easily accessible, the importance of scale on the retailing end of the business increases. Maybe even this: Long tails of demand lead to short tails of distribution.

Does anyone know anything about the auto-parts business? Is there any validity to my hypothesis?

1:40:13 AM    comment   

You can get a cellular signal even in the remotest places you go on holiday. However, progress is a patchy thing, and some of my experiences getting mobile data to work were so spectacularly, splendidly and unrelentingly dismal, I thought I’d share them with you. It’s quite long, so maybe get yourself a coffee first. If you’re an investor in telcos, I’d make that an Irish coffee. A stiff one.

My objective was simple: be able to access my e-mail while I’m away without my laptop, so I know there are no fires in my little consulting business needing my urgent attention.

Firstly, you need some connectivity.

1:32:23 AM    comment