Japan's Asahi Shimbun newspaper boasts a daily circulation of 12 million -- more than the combined total circulation of the top nine U.S. newspapers, including The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, USA Today, the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times. But the print circulation is just part of Asahi's amazing readership profile: At a time when few media companies have figured out how to get readers to pay for online news, Asahi has more than 1 million subscribers paying about $1 per month to access Asahi's wireless Web site via cell phone. Yomiuri Shimbun, the world's No. 1 newspaper with a circulation of 14 million, lags far behind Asahi's wireless successes, with just over 300,000 wireless Web subscribers. What explains Asahi's wireless advantage? It could simply be that Asahi has a better handle on what wireless users want.
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Although Asahi didn't predict success with its cell phone news service, it didn't have to be told twice to capitalize on a good thing. |
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Most wireless Web users in Japan are teens and young adults who couldn't care less about news -- surveys show that the average person in this age group spends less than 10 minutes per day reading the newspaper.This age group loves comics, celebrities, entertainment and sports; they use their cell phones almost constantly to message text and photos to friends. They love to download fun things -- like games and ringtones -- not the latest news headlines. So when Asahi.com decided to start a wireless news service in 1999, they began by launching with free sports news from Asahi's sports publication, Nikkan Sports. People signed up in droves. In 2000, Asahi began charging about $1 per month for the wireless service, which is completely automated. By October, it had 1 million subscribers. In 2001, Asahi's cell phone service profits totaled nearly $240,000. When you consider that Asahi and other news companies in Japan believed wireless news would never attract subscribers or make money, even this relatively small profit is a coup. "At this point, the mobile phone site is the most profitable part of our interactive business," says Hiromi Ohnishi, deputy manager of planning and development for Asahi Shimbun's electric media and broadcasting division. Although Asahi didn't predict success with its wireless news service, it didn't have to be told twice to capitalize on a good thing. The company examined other successful wireless content providers and found that ringtones, screen savers and games were the other moneymakers. Deciding that "news is not enough," Ohnishi says, they used Asahi.com as a platform for other services: - News Battle -- co-sponsored by Nikkei, Japan's version of the Wall Street Journal -- launched in March 2001. The service has 36,000 subscribers who pay about 85 cents per month to take the latest current-events quiz from both papers. The quiz is scored instantly.
- Chiezo, launched in August 2001, has 28,000 subscribers who pay about 85 cents per month for a keyword search service of a current news-terms archive and an article search from Asahi Shimbun.
- Asahi Lifeline News was launched in October 2002 to provide breaking news and emergency information about road and rail closures, flight delays, weather alerts, earthquakes and volcanoes. Users can program the service to e-mail them regular updates about the roads or railroad lines that they frequent. About 1,700 subscribers pay $1.70 per month for the service. One thousand of those subscribers signed on in one blast two months after the service launched when Japan was hit with severe snowstorms that blocked roads and rail lines for days.
- Asahi Mobile Station is a streaming-video news site for phones that can display video clips. It was launched as a free trial in 2001, then as a pay service last October. It now has 1,000 subscribers who pay about $2.55 per month for news clips from Asahi's TV stations. The clips are updated three times a day.
Asahi also added a music service for sports events. High school baseball fans can download their team's anthem. During last year's World Cup, fans could download the national anthems of participating teams.
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