Transition Analysis of Mobile Social Games from Feature-Phone to Smart-Phone

The Japanese feature-phone has traced a relatively unique evolutionary path considering its unique service development context in the last decade. The global trend of smart phones has provided a new direction in evolution for the mobile service business in Japan. This transition in a unique ecosystem and user experience provides an opportunity to identify the driving factors for mobile service business. The author discusses the possible scenarios in Japan for this ongoing transition from feature-phones to smart-phones. The author analyzes the impacts from the transition using a three-dimensional analysis of the user adoption dimension, content production dimension, and business model dimension.