Yahoo and Google. Are they really top Search Engines for mobile terminals in Japan?

   Competition is being intensified on the Search Engine market for mobile terminals in Japan. The year 2006 was said to be the "initial year for the mobile search". Thus the race to get the lion's share on the market has just begun. Yahoo and Google have become to the two top strongest Search Engines for personal computers. For searching by mobile terminals, however, other Search Engines still have the chance of winning the top place, and new comers are entering the race.

   Searching on the Internet by personal computers and mobiles differs from each other. When searching is made on the mobile phones, the sites designed especially for mobiles may appear on the screen but other sites containing videos because they are primarily designed for searches by personal computers with big memories are likely to be disregarded. It is only recently that the full-scale searching by mobile terminals on the Internet began. This may be the reason the searchers using mobiles often complain that they "tend to see the sites they are not particularly looking for appear in the top places of the list on the screens" or they "can not find the sites which they can normally find easily by personal computers". There is still room for improvement for the searching for sites on the Internet by mobiles.

   To see what might happen, "J-CAST" was typed in on the search windows of a personal computer and a mobile phone using Google. As a result, 2,150,000 items were found on the computer and about 8,700 on the mobile. The top three items that appeared on the computer in order were: the top page of J-CAST News, the J-CAST News item moved on Aug. 16, 2006 about "visit to Yasukuni Shrine by prime minister strongly 'supported' on the net, and the Wikipedia's pace on J-CAST. On the mobile, the three top items appeared in order were: the J-CAST News item issued on July 22, 2007 about 'loose' relationship on the net, and another J-CAST News item. The item appeared in the third place was the "J-POWER" site which has nothing to do with J-CAST, in which the word "J-CAST" does not appear. A number of trial searches were made on the mobile, and the result about the items appearing in the top places was found to be unstable. The same Search Engine thus show different results when it is on personal computers and on mobiles.

Late comers have the chance of winning the top place.

Numerous sites appear when "mobile search" is searched on PC

   The titles of a total of 14 search sites were found by typing in "mobile searching" on the "i-mode" search site of NTT Docomo. They were in order of appearance, Yahoo! Mobile, Google Mobile, froute.jp, mobilelivedoor, etc. Some of these 14 tiles are familiar on personal computers and some others are not.

   In addition there are others that are newly coming in for the race. Rakuten is expected to form a joint firm with the Norwegian-based company Fast Search & Transfer in mid-September of 2007. It plans to start mobile search service within the course of 2007. According to the Japan unit of Fast, the company has been offering a search engine since 2003 on the sites of Rakuten. It proudly says the search results of the engine do not merely enumerate the items in order of the number of they are searched but the company has the know-how of showing the search results in accordance with the users' desire to "buy something". The company indicated that this know-how would be utilized in the mobile search service. "As long as we enter the race as a late comer, we have the confidence of achieving a good result, and we believe we have the chance of getting ahead," a person at the company said.

   It would be no easy task to challenge to win in the race for search business for personal computers. According to a survey conducted by NetRatings Japan Inc., the largest number of people used Yahoo search service from their home personal computers in July 2007. The second and third largest number of people used Google and MSN, respectively. The order did not change from a year earlier. But the number of the users of Yahoo and Google increased by 10% and 29%, respectively, while the number of MSN decreased. The number of the users of MSN was less than one third of that of Yahoo. The users of the Search Engine that was placed in the fourth place in the survey was less than a half of that of MSN. The some of users of the Search Engines that were placed in the fourth place and down showed small increases, but the users of most of them decreased. The top two Search Engines seemed to gather up the users. A person at the PR-Marketing of NetRatings said the "trend does seem to show a dramatic change in the future".

New comer Search Engines are aiming at linked advertisements.

   The race among the Search Engines has just started for searching by mobile terminal users. KDDI of the au brand introduced the Google search on the top page of its "EZweb" in July 2006. SoftBank NTT Docomo have also been dealing with mobile searching since 2006. According to a survey conducted jointly by Net Asia Research and other firms, Yahoo was the top runner as of March 2007. Under a multiple reply method, the survey showed that 52.3% were found out to be using Yahoo frequently. Google came in as the second runner at 37% and i-mode was the third at 28%. Placed fourth was Mobile Biglobe at far below 6.7%. The rest followed at several percent each.

   The survey seemed to prove that the top three companies led the entire business. Tomoki Kyono, head of the R&D at Net Age Research, said, however, that the search engines for mobiles have not fixed as those for personal computers. "There are thus still room for new comers to cut in," he said. Many people still use personal computers as their main terminal and mobile phones as their supplementary terminal. Thus it is likely that they use Yahoo and Google, primarily the main Search Engines for search by personal computers, as a habit. There are an increasing number of people younger than 20 who use only mobiles.

   These young people select Search Engine on the basis of whether or not it is capable of giving satisfactory search results. They do not seem to care about the legendary name of Yahoo or Google. If they find a Search Engine that is easy to use, that Search Engine is certain to gain popularity. The search functions of Yahoo and Google do not seem to have that strength.

   Provided that there is still room technically for new comers to enter into the market, what would be the aim of those that actually enter? Kyono's reply was that it would certainly be the "linked advertisements". The users of mobiles write in a string of two words at most as a key word for search, shorter than those who use personal computers. So the Search Engines would compete for techniques to provide the mobile users with the results they want to achieve and also as many advertisement pages as possible on the small screens of the mobile terminals. The winners and losers will be clearly separated from each other through this competition. "It is likely that an increasing number of new comers enter into the race. But the number of the sites that will survive the competition will be squeezed down," he added.

   Asked about the possibility of winning the competition by froute.jp, Junji Oshita, its chief operating officer, indicated it would be extremely difficult to satisfy the mobile users by simply extending the search method for personal computers. Effort is being made to prepare for the display of information contents if desired information can not be displayed. It is the desire of the company to defeat Yahoo and Google. Unless the company succeeds in defeating them, it can not remain in the business. It appears to be the same as the search business for personal computers.