The mobile web is huge in Japan, meaning the alliance between Japanese Internet powerhouses Dwango, Mixi, MySpace Japan, Mobage-town, Yahoo and telecommunications company SoftBank Mobile announced on Thursday has to be taken very seriously.
Details are rather scarce at this point but SoftBank, for example, says [J] Dwango will provide content from its super-successful video portal Nico Nico Douga and that additional partnerships are currently being considered.
To kick off the alliance, SoftBank is organizing a widget coding contest [J] and will start accepting applications later this month. The winner will be announced in May next year and gets 2 Mio. Yen (20.000 USD, 16.000 Euros).
I am not really sure if this alliance will really change anything at all for users and the web industry itself but if Japan’s No 1, 2, 4, 7 and 19 (Yahoo, Softbank, DeNA/Mobage-town, Mixi and Dwango) in the list of the most valuable web companies participate something interesting might come out of it.
Although the initiative is limited to the mobile web, an alliance between giants like that is unheard of outside Japan or am I mistaken?
Serkan Toto