Flash Lite 3.0 reaching Japan sooner rather than later

Via Scott J: some Flash Lite stats from DC following Adobe MAX Japan:

• 94% of docomo handsets are flash-enabled.
• The “i-menu” - docomo’s portal is full-flash. They get about 25-30M viewers per month, making it definitely the highest trafficked mobile site in the world.
• 30% of DoCoMo subsribers are on flat-rate data (KDDI is much higher, about 75% i recall)
• The profits for the voice business of docomo keep falling every year, while the profits for the data business go up every year.
• The data business gets increasingly profitable every year - by about 100 billion yen. They expect that record to be repeated again this year. (these numbers seem off the scale - 100 billion yen is like a billion dollars???)
• As the UI improves, usage goes up. Flashlite has been a big help in this, so flashlite has made them a lot of money.
• Two companies in the valley starting with “A” are really cool! “M” Companies in seattle are really lame
• i-channel is built on flashcast, and has got 13.8M subscribers inside of two years.
• i-channel is the opposite of their i-menu - its like the super-limited version for people who are overwhelmed by the choice on i-menu. You can pick from news, weather, sports…5 basic channels.

As we have done for years, we watch and hope that the success of Flash Lite in Japan flows through to the rest of the world! I'm more confident these days that it will, but those are some pretty impressive stats.