In 1999 Japanese mobile operator NTT DoCoMo launched arguably the world’s first successful
mobile Internet services portal called “i‐mode”. In Europe at the same time a series of failures
diminished the opportunities to attract customers to the mobile Internet. Even though similar
Internet technologies were available in Japan and the UK, very different markets for services
developed during the initial years 1999‐2003. When the West expected Japanese firms to
become dominant players in the mobile digitalisation of services during the introduction of 3G
networks, it remained instead a national affair. The dominant views of how markets for mobile
services operated seemed flawed.
So‐called delivery platforms were used to connect mobile phones with service contents that were
often adapted from the PC world. Designing and operating service delivery platforms became a
new niche market. It held a pivotal role for the output of services and competition among
providers.
This thesis sets out to answer a set of inter‐related questions: How and where did firms innovate
in this new and growing part of the service economy and how are new business models mediated
by service delivery platforms? It argues that innovation in the digitalised economy is largely
influenced by firms achieving platform leadership through coordination of both technological
systems and the creation of multi‐sided exchanges.
This thesis demonstrates from cases of multi‐sided markets in operator‐controlled portals, of
mobile video and TV and of event ticketing in Japan and the UK that defining the scope of the
firm on the network level forms the basis for incremental innovation, the dominant form of
service innovation. A parallel focus on coordinating platform technology choices forms the basis
for firms to trade fees, advertisements, and user data, enabling control over profitable parts of
multi‐sided value networks