To eBay or not to eBay-

Funny. Funny-strange that is. On the one hand eBay is quietly shrinking away in the night from the Japanese market while at the same time they investing USD$9.5 millionto buy NeoCom Technology, Taiwan's first internet auction player. Make sense? Perhaps. After all Taiwan does have 23 million people while Japan only has half the population of the US.... And the Taiwanese economy is doing well while Japan is on the brink of possible disaster. About 25% of the Taiwanese are already "online". How about Japan? Well the percentage of people using PC's to surf the internet is already pretty high and growing rapidly (it will skyrocket as people learn how to use it to hunt for new jobs and re-educate themselves.) But, more importantly than PC access is the huge number of Japanese accessing the internet through their cellphones using i-Mode (DoCoMo) and other services.

Of course the eBay strategists may be thinking that no one in Japan will have any money to spend as the economy breaks new deflationary ground. Perhaps. But deflationary times are usually the most fertile for the growth of discount shops, swap meets, cheap volume restaurants, and (psst) on line auctions.....

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- posted by tempusmaster @ 8:35 PM