Japan’s No. 1 mobile carrier, NTT Docomo, opened a feature-phone only “app store” on December 6, 2010. The portal started with 1,200 apps, one million music titles and a total of 30,000 e-books, with all content exclusively for download onto Docomo’s feature phones.
Docomo gets 20% of all revenue from content providers (individuals and businesses alike) who look at a customer base of 55 million.
But how exactly is Docomo’s app market doing? In a recent interview with Nikkei IT Pro, a Docomo representative revealed some numbers.
Here are the details, which I think aren’t available in English anywhere:
- the number of apps shot up to 2,000 since the opening of the store
- the store sees 400,000 unique users only (that’s not too bad)
- the number of visitors in the second month was 25% higher than in the first
- 1,000,000 people downloaded at least one piece of content so far
- 10% of apps are paid
- the number of paid apps tripled from a month earlier
There are three reasons for these solid numbers:
- Users can conveniently pay via their cell phone bill (the number credit card holders in Japan is relatively low).
- Promotion through Docomo’s mail magazine (circulation: 1 million).
- Docomo now allows individuals (not only companies) to offer apps, with 10% of apps coming from individuals currently.
