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August 20, 2004

Think globally, act locally, and know the difference

We were honored to be able to meet with Wang Jianzhou, Chairman and President of China Unicom, China's second largest wireless carrier. He shared a lot of wisdom with us but a few things really stood out.

The first was that he very explicitly chose to follow NTT DoCoMo's platform play in launching their wireless data service. Rather than trying to build the "killer apps" on wireless data themselves they opened it up to tons of ICPs (independant content providers) - over 600 major ones at last count. And made it easy for them to make money, providing billing and other infrastructure and charging only 10-15% of the revenue in return. Result, wireless data has taken off (a very, very good thing with over 300MM cell phones in China). By not being too greedy, China Unicom established an awesome ecosystem and reaps ongoing rewards.

Another of the many insights that left a huge impression. When searching for the plan of how import DoCoMo's success Mr. Jianzhou went to Japan and took the subway to watch how the Japanese used their cell phones. As he watched, he noticed that at least 50% was staring at thier handset screens and clicking away quietly. He took the same subways in Korea and the number was around 25% and others were talking on their cells. In Hong Kong, no one.

Why? Culture. In Japan it is considered impolite to talk loudly in subways. So data phones are the perfect outlet. In Korea less so. In Hong Kong everyone is loud anyway(look at the US where Cingular has to run ads about the annoying cell phone man - to get people to stop talking in movie theaters).

How did he figure this out and adapt? The smart, practical way - on the ground with his real target customers. What a wise man. Assume nothing. Check it out for yourself!

Posted by johnza at August 20, 2004 06:17 PM

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