Mobile Geekdom:

While I didn't think much of it at first, but it seems as if I may be in a somewhat unique situation, that of working for small, but up and coming Japanese keitai (mobile phone) web dev company. One of sites, girlswalker.com (viewing the *real* site limited to keitais only) as a mobile portal already has more hits per day then yahoo! Japan's mobile portal site.

While there is some degree of technical understanding involved in making such sites, I find myself marveling most at is the market and business orientation. Business arrangements seem very incestuous, and often ambiguous on who is doing what. Perhaps, this is due still to my somewhat novice understanding of such things.

The market orientation is just amazing, especially compared to typical US or perhaps even European markets, where the orientation is for professional (often older males) users, while in Japan is all oriented towards young (teens and 20-somethings) users who have more of entertainment, novelty and personalization interests.

One site that really spurred me on is:

Institute for Mobile Markets Research

My thinking is really starting to shift about what type of products to focus on...

Oh, and yet reason to get better at my Japanese!