It is reported that 67 % of global mobile content is SMSbased, compared to 0 The Japanese market shows the two new directions: emergence of mobile Web 2.0 and distinguished transition from the current business models to the vertical integration ones by mobile operators. Some of Japanese carriers press their own content like music download, auction, micro-payment and so on. It is interesting to investigate how this mobile-specific vertical integration will work in the future as the handset and network converges to the PCs. In addition, the emerging increase of search use and social network use in the mobile contexts initiates the mobile-specific Web 2.0 penetration, another trend of convergence. The high penetration of 3G networks inevitably leads to the flat rate charging, which drives the wireless carriers to seek for other revenue sources.

The past lessons told that the mobile service business model evolution was not monotonic due to the complexity of interactions of users, content providers and wireless carriers. It is critical to identify the key factors of business model development, either in Web 2.0-related aspects (e.g. user-generated content) or in vertical integration (e.g. carrier-owned content business or real-world integration services). The two paths toward Mobile Web 2.0 are depicted in Fig. 1, with a specific strategy for each path.