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NTT to Start i-mode Services in U.S. 90

Posted by timothy from the streaming-webcams-everywhere dept.
Vertigo Donkey writes: "Reuters has a report on NTT DoCoMo Inc.'s debut on the London and New York stock markets on Friday. What does this mean for the US? Well, according to a (very) brief article in the Japan Times, DoCoMo plans to offer 'its i-mode Internet-capable mobile phone service in the United States before the end of this year.'"
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NTT to Start i-mode Services in U.S. More

NTT to Start i-mode Services in U.S.

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  • Does those cute litle letters (DoCoMo) mean anything in English?

    • Re:Hmm... cute litle letters (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Dokomo is Japanese for "everywhere" so it's a play on words.

      • Actually it's spelled DoCoMo, not dokomo.

        It's actually a phrase from English -- " Dot Com Mode ". When abbreviated in that cute Japanese syllabic way, DoCoMo!

        It's a happy coincidence that it is pronounced similar to dokomo (everywhere), as you said. I hope that comes true. I can't wait for DoCoMo to be available in the USA!!

        • Was that meant to be funny? DoCoMo is the name of the company, and it really is a play on 'dokomo', though it's also supposed to be short for something like 'Do Communicate by Mobile'. The hypertext/email service is called 'i-mode', in which the 'i' doesn't have a fixed meaning but can be taken as 'information', 'Internet', or any number of other things.
    • It also stands for Do Communications over the Mobile network...Or so I was told

      Mind you, Docomo is quite evil.

    • Does those cute litle letters (DoCoMo) mean anything in English?

      Those cute little letters mean something in Japanese. It is derived from 'doco demo'. Doko means 'where'. Doko demo means 'anywhere'; hence referring to service you can use anywhere. The first word is used with a sylable from the second word (and of course changing the k to a c). This is a common way of creating new words in Japanese - whether it be standard Japanese words, or new slang or corporate (in this case) branding.

      I have also heard of docomo being lengthened into "Do Comunications" as another poster mentioned but I am quite sure this was a marketing slogan and not the origin of the word.

      • I have also heard of docomo being lengthened into "Do Comunications" as another poster mentioned but I am quite sure this was a marketing slogan and not the origin of the word.

        Actually, it's "Do Communications over the Mobile Network", though I don't doubt that "DoCoMo" came first.

  • $10,000 per stock O.O...

    ...um... That's cutting off a large share of investors... but perhaps it's meant to solidify their position, as the investments higher and less likely to be bought and sold on a whim... still...

    • $10,000 per stock O.O...

      ...um... That's cutting off a large share of investors...

      This stock isn't targeted at Joe 401K or Jane eTrade, it's targetted buyers are the likes of Morgan Stanley, who will buy because it'll be worth 10x that in a couple years. There's no point in offering shares to small investors on a move of this magnitude.

    • japanese stocks do not split like american stocks. So they can become very expensive. of course, they do hang around as a result. consider the dotcom bust.
      • japanese stocks do not split like american stocks
        What are you talking about? DoCoMo itself plans to do a 5-to-1 split [nttdocomo.co.jp] in May. (Sorry, the link is in Japanese)
  • The article reads:
    ...plans to introduce its hit "i-mode" mobile Internet access service in Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands within the next two months.

    While this is great I suppose, I am surprised that they will not begin with the usual heavy-weight mobile-phone-friendly countries, such as Finland, Sweden..

    Anyway, depending on how they package their services and what you get for the price, that may be very interesting and very cool. I'm actually excited to see that finally EU/US will be catching up with some Japanese gadgets :)

    • While this is great I suppose, I am surprised that they will not begin with the usual heavy-weight mobile-phone-friendly countries, such as Finland, Sweden..

      I think the reason for that is, that DoCoMo holds a large share of KPN, the Netherland's biggest mobile phone operator, which in turn posseses a part of E-Plus a smaller german operator. I'd guess the picture is simillar in Belgium. They're planning to introduce the service in Germany at the CeBIT [cebit.de] (biggest computer fair in the world), which would be in 10 days.

    • Various analysts [newsbytes.com] have all predicted i-mode is doomed to fail in europe. The business model as it stands in Japan just doesn't work. One of the main reasons for i-mode's success in Japan was the lack of text messaging. Europe has had this for some time, phone's and networks are nearly at the i-mode level and given 3G investment from other networks, seems unlikely to succeed. Jon (Doing WAP development!)
      • The "various analysts" report you link to has caused much mirth for those of us in Japan who develop for i-mode.

        Fact 1) Imode handsets have full email capability. I have no idea what the newysbytes analyst means by

        "Japanese mobile-phone users don't have access to text-messaging technology, so mobile phone users have embraced I-Mode to allow them to surf the mobile Internet for their e-mail,"

        Fact - when you send email (from any email client) to an i-mode phone, it is delivered straight to the handset. No "surfing the web" required. It is a packet network and you pay for the packets received - not for the time online. So yes - you pay for incoming mail. But not a great deal, and I would rather have it that way than have to pay for the time I am online.

        Fact 2) Imode succeeded text based paging - which was the previous rage in Japan back when Europeans still thought that the digital watch was a rather cool new fangled piece of tech. So - no particular "lack of text messaging void" to fill... SMS? It's a joke.

        What do you mean by "phones and networks are nearly at the i-mode level? The handsets I have seen in the UK on my trips home have been - oh - horridly misconceived bricks. I am sure you finally have one or two decent phones - but the majority of Brits at least are still using handsets better suited to use in the building industry.

        As for networks - are they packet networks? Do you have the "always online" feeling that you get with i-mode?

        As for comparing WAP with imode's version of chtml - knocking up a page for imode is trivial.

        And when you claim phones and networks are nearly at the imode level - is that the new 3G Foma level, or the last generation, boring full colour 10k Java midlet running phones?

        I-mode succeeded in Japan because the user experience is excellent - the phones "just work" there is wodges of content online, that kind of stuff. And it is a doddle to develop for.

        Nick May
        Fukuoka, Japan
        i-mode/j-phone website developer....
        • You are missing the point. Most people don't want email to there phone, SMS is what is known as a killer app for mobile phones in the UK/Europe.

          I am a student, I text people all the time, for 5p I can send a quick message to any of my friends on any network at any time (as opposes to about 50p a min to call another network at peak time). Yes I can't get email (wap is a joke) but for "Going down the pub?" style messages who needs it.

          Texting is a universal, I expect more people send text messages in the UK than use email regularly (approximately 1.4 billion text messages were sent in the UK last month http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/uk/newsid_1841000 /1841942.stm.

          The point is that the reason imode was a success in Japan was that it filled the same niche in Japan as SMS did in Europe. Why would I want to by a new phone to text my friends if I can already do it and they would have to get a new phone to do it as well. WAP has killed off most people's view of the "Internet" on a mobile, and unless you suddenly get BIG mobiles with BIG screens what is the point any way.

          When was the last time you saw mobiles in the UK?

          Ok I have a brick like phone, as I am a poor student and it is about 2 years old. But nearly all new phones are tiny. Most of my friends have phones like the Nokia 3310 (http://www.nokia.com/phones/3310/index.html ) which is not exactly huge.

          Imode could work well in the US, but it is going to need more than text messaging to be a hit in the UK and Europe.
        • Can't argue with facts 1&2 :) Think by surf for email they essentially mean use the phone. With regard to the phones, I was in Tokyo a few months ago, yes, your phones are amazing, smaller, all colour etc. Phones here are just getting to colour (Ericsson T68), most are now coming out with WAP 1.2.1 and GPRS support. No Java support yet (except on the communicator devices) When I say nearly, give it a year and I'd say most new phones will be WAP 2.0, GPRS and colour. So still not quite i-mode level admittedly, but significant improvement on recent devices. Networks are now implementing GPRS always on in UK, most of the networks have it available. Re UI etc, see my other post about Mari Matsunaga, excellent choice of mobile phone hating editor in chief! My point was basically that i-mode, whilst technically better strikes me as something of a betamax / vhs affair. It's arriving too late.
        • I mostly agree with you about i-mode vs WAP (see my post elsewhere about WAP's brokenness). The phones in the UK are nowhere near i-mode or i-appli in ease of use, and FOMA is further ahead still. The new 3G phones coming out this year in Europe may give FOMA a run for its money, but ease of use is still the critical issue - i-mode and FOMA seem to be designed on the MacOS model, i.e. an end to end design that is highly usable. European and US 3G won't have that level of integration.

          However, GPRS is packet-mode and now rolled out on 3 out of 4 UK networks (not sure about one2one), and in many other European countries. It's faster than i-mode's PDC-P (which is 9.6 Kbps), up to 30-50 Kbps depending on cell site, following wind, etc. And of course GPRS is always-on, like PDC-P.

    • reasons that they are starting with germany is that e-plus (which is starting with imode in germany) is owned by dutch kpn which is 25% (not sure about right percentage) owned by ntt docomo. that way ntt docomo is indirectly trying to introduce imode into europe without any major investment in infrastructure

    • Re:Nordic countries in all this ? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by macpeep ( 36699 ) on Sunday March 03, 2002 @10:37AM (#3101048)
      "While this is great I suppose, I am surprised that they will not begin with the usual heavy-weight mobile-phone-friendly countries, such as Finland, Sweden.."

      I live in Finland and I'm definitely a "first mover". Guess what? I wouldn't get an i-mode phone. I'm perfectly happy with my current GSM triple band, GPRS & Bluetooth capable Ericsson T68 (it has a color screen too and is very small). It works in just about every country in the world, USA included. My laptop and PDA connects to the internet with it, without any wires what so ever. GPRS is pretty cheap too (depending of course what you use it for). What extra would i-mode give me over the current phone and service that I have?

      GSM & GPRS & SMS & WAP & J2ME are technology wise up there with i-mode. GSM gives you something that i-mode doesn't: it works just about anywhere in the world.
      • iMode is completely independant of the network structure. Any 2.5G network will work. iMode is currently running on the NTT 2.5G PDC network and will run great on GSM/PCS/CDMA. iMode is doing well in Japan for three reasons. 1. The content is outstanding. 2. The average Japanese commuter spends 1 to 2 hours a day on the trains where it is not culturally acceptable to talk on your phone, so everyone uses iMode during their commute. 3. Japan has a very low number of internet connected PCs in homes, but 50 million iMode, JSky, and ezWeb (iMode competitors) capable phones.

        I'm an American MBA currently studying in Japan and I've just finished a strategy project with DoCoMo's 3G service FOMA. No one outside of Japan can even begin to imagine how advanced the phones and services are. The big question is whether or not US users will use the services, as most Americans drive to work and iMode is targeted at filling the 'dead time' during peoples' commute and other waiting times, like the doctors office.
        • I was in Japan a few months ago when FOMA was launched.. I played with both the iMode phones and the FOMA phone. Sure, they are nice, but really, technology wise, iMode & iAppli has nothing to offer that WAP and J2ME wouldn't already accomplish. Or let's say COULD. What you said about content quality is the key issue. Japanese content is good. In Europe, it's complete crap. It's not the fault of the technology tho, so I don't see how going iMode would change it.
      • Hate to break it to you, but i-mode is not a network protocol like GSM (which is a TDMA variant). i-mode is an application framework (including the cHTML browser) that runs on top of Japan's PDC network. You're confusing two fundamentally different things.

        Aside from that, though, you're right, we're pretty much on par with what's available in Japan. The Ericsson T68 in particular is a very nice phone. It's even upgradeable and you can install Ericsson's XHTML browser when it becomes available. The T68i will be announced this week, and it'll have MMS as well as video playback capabilities.

        I use a Nokia 9210, and my major gripes with that it are 1) Size 2) No GPRS 3) No tri-band 4) No Bluetooth. Even though mine costs more (and I work for Nokia), I gotta admit that, pound-for-pound, yours is the best handset out on the market right now. Until the T68i comes out, that is =)

      • My only complaint is crappy GSM coverage in the US. I use Cingular in the Bay Area and it's been terribly oversubscribed and has poor signal strength. So even *if* someone can get through to me and doesn't get a fast busy then chances are the call will be dropped.

        I like my phone, a v3682, and am considering switching to a Palm Phone. I like handspring, but I am not sure I wanna stay with GSM and the Samsung color palm phone sure does look nice.
      • I've used WAP since the Nokia 7110 came out, and I still find it has huge problems, even on my T68 - WAP gateways break, WAP browsers refuse to display pages, and WAP sites make it hard to do simple things like 'Back' in the browser (they actually control that sort of feature...). Most importantly, even when WAP works, the sites are frequently very hard to use due to poor design.

        GPRS makes WAP easier to use, because it's always-on, but it's not any faster for my provider - in fact a side-by-side test at the same time on the same site showed GSM was a bit faster (though more expensive and not really a noticeable difference).

        J2ME will help matters, particularly the model of keeping a local data cache on the phone, but it's a lot harder to write a J2ME midlet than a WAP or i-mode page, so they will not be so common IMO.

        I think that i-mode has a huge future if it addresses the failings of WAP before the M-Services and other initiatives deliver. It's more like TV than a PC, i.e. 'it just works' whereas WAP is a painful experience akin to the web browser in the mid-90s.
    • Not 3G in Belgium, Germany, and Netherlands. The Reuters securities article is junk information unless all you want is financials. Here's an article [yahoo.com] which tells a little more about what's happening.

  • Can't Catch Up (Score:3, Interesting)

    by ScumBiker ( 64143 ) <scumbiker AT jwenger DOT org> on Sunday March 03, 2002 @09:41AM (#3100981) Homepage Journal
    I think it means that the $400 I just spent for my Kyocera smart phone is for naught. I really wish that the cell vendors over here in the states would get their shit together and offer us something decent. How about simply bringing us to the same level as European cell service? I'm not sure that this imode internet phone is that useful though. All the article really says is that DoCoMo is contracted with AT&T. At least with my phone, I get the Palm OS. Granted, the screen is about 25% smaller, but I can still play solitare in meetings with it quite nicely. And, of course, get all the functional;ity of a Palm PDA plus some cool phone specific apps.

    • Re:Can't Catch Up (Score:1, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      What else do cell vendors need to do to "get their shit together"? Offer you a phone that makes you a latte, parks your BMW, sends you the latest anime reviews and laundaries your whities? I don't know what's wrong with your $400 Kyocera, but my $99 Samsung works just fine at making PHONE CALLS. Ordering pizzas, calling friends, family and coworkers all seems to work just fine with my service. I don't need a $400 phone and an outrageously priced monthy bill to feel that my phone service is complete. 3G, PDA, Palm-OS powered internet-conenctivity devices or whatever the heck they are might work for self important whizkids that the marketing machine lusts for, the guys that will buy a $400 PHONE because they "need it" to "get work done". I'll take the cheap stuff, works just fine thanks.
      • What else do cell vendors need to do to "get their shit together"?

        Erm, standardization?

        This Japan stuff might be nifty-cool, but to me it seems more like YAP (Yet Another Protocol), something we are not lacking at all here in the USA. Honestly, I'd rather see the USA go all-GSM, and upgrade to the latest enhancements like HSCSD and GPRS. Fortunately AT&T has moved in this direction, as I have heard rumors of shared GSM towers here in California (finally some GSM competition for you Cingular!), and apparently they did a small GPRS deployment in Washington. Ironically, Cingular (a current GSM provider), has not shown any sign of advancing. But then what do you expect from a company that barely even promotes their data services?

        Too bad "3G" isn't actually a protocol, but rather a nice buzzword to represent the next step that all of the currently incompatible networks (GSM, Sprint, Verizon, Japan, Analogue, AT&T) take.
        • What does Erm mean or is it a misspelling?
        • I don't know about California, but here in NJ Cingular is definitely not GSM. Voicestream is the only American GSM provider that I know of.
        • iMode and iAppli are fairly standardized. I forget the name of the protocol, but iMode pages are written in stripped-down PHP code. iAppli is Java. Both standards are open.
        • i-mode is not a protocol on the level of GPRS, in fact it can use GPRS (and UMTS [3G] and the Japanese PDC-P) as a transport. In fact i-mode is being deployed by KPN in the Netherlands and will run over GPRS there (some other deployments should also happen e.g. in Germany).

          i-mode includes its own HTML variant (cHTML, quite close to standard HTML unlike WAP's WML), and some sort of application level protocol (proprietary to NTT I think). This runs over a packet mode layer, which is analogous to IP but designed for wireless (shorter headers etc - spectrum is expensive). i-mode also includes (crucially) a content-based billing system for official providers (NTT approved), and data transfer based (i.e. Kbytes) billing for unofficial providers (NTT makes a lot of money out of these).

          Most importantly, NTT designed the phones and told the manufacturers to make them - the NTT logo is on the phone, the manufacturer isn't (hard to replicate anywhere except Japan). The end to end i-mode architecture is a bit like MacOS - quite proprietary but it's very easy to use (see http://www.useit.com/ for an article on this). Also, NTT takes only 9% of the official content providers' revenues, compared to the Euro wireless providers who typically take about half for premium SMS services. Guess which one has more providers, more revenues and more profits...

          3G isn't a protocol either, but CDMA2000 and UMTS are suites of protocols that conform to the ITU-T's '3G vision' - aka IMT-2000, which is even more fluffy and vaporous than 3G is!

      • If all you want to do is use your cellphone as a telephone, fine. Why did you even pay $99 for it? Hell, there's plenty of free (with service contract) phones out there. I personally want a phone I can use to plan my time, play games, send and recieve email, get pages, and oh yea! send and recive phone calls. My current phone is close, but no paging. As in having the coverage a regular pager has. We're gettin there though.

    • Re:Can't Catch Up (Score:2, Interesting)

      by ackthpt ( 218170 )
      really wish that the cell vendors over here in the states would get their shit together and offer us something decent.

      You hit the nail on the head. I can't imagine them sitting on their hands while 3G/i-mode enters the US (althought it's only 2.5G service being rolled out in Netherlands, Belgium and Germany, so... is it really going to be 3G in US? You know how Japan holds back cool stuff for the home market...) But it's been at least a decade since cell phone service really started (I still have my first bag-phone around here somewhere) and they've really done very little. I think this is a case of Japan invading the US consumer electronic markets, once again, like they did with transistor radios, color TV's and pretty much everything else.

      $10,000 for a share of stock in technology that's actually prooven and hot, will probably start carving great chunks of market from the lazy existing vendors, well that's a deal, see? After all the money thrown at companies that are now bust or at <$10 a share, you get the picture. The stock sold because the heavyweight investors know it, NTT knows it, why bother offering stock to small fish?

      I fully expect cell phone providers to run to the government to head this off, same as the big 3 automakers did, so innovatively, in the 70's.

      Oh, and since your phone is a Kyocera, you might look to see if they offer any upgrades, since Kyocera is a japanese electronics company, after all ;)

  • NTT is about to do to Motorola what Sony did to them 2 decades ago.

    The DoCoMo phones are so far ahead of what complacent US companies have been spewing out. Hopeful this time Motorola will wake up before they have to kill off another profitable industry like they did with their TV and radio divisions
    • This isn't just about Motorola, its about the gap between the phone makers and the service providers. It's big enough that NTT plans to drive a truck through it. If this was already a truly competitive market, they'd stay home. The japanese have demonstrated time and again the vulnerabilities of american markets, because american companies won't work together, or can't, then come in as an alternative (since competition already exists) and run the table. You'd think if anyone saw this as a problem they'd stop with the anti-dumping laws and the industry would get it's sh!t together.
  • I can't understand what is this buzz with Imode, it really isn't so speacial in technical terms. Only reason why press and ingnorent people keep talking about Imode is that Imode has made it in Japan. And because of this, many say Imode is coming and we should forget about Wap etc... Reason for Imode's succes was it's billing scheme. You didn't have to pay by the time but by what services you used. In Europe Wap didn't make it because of billing. Now with GRPS-network and billing based on data transfer rates and usage of services, things are quite bit similar with Imode. Maybe in america people start to use more their mobile phones with introduction of Imode and it's billing scheme. But from European perspective, there isn't really a news. And one thing about phones. Many have seen and been talking about Japanese wonder phones that can do all kind of things including video comminucation. I must say that one reason we hear don't have those kind of phones is that it's not economical for mobile phone manufactures to sell phones with advanched technology. Your basic Nokia phone has technology build years ago. Just repackaged in a new fold to justify new high price for the phone. Of course Nokia has many models that have advanched features, but well... it's not economical to make them public... so... I will end my complaining and just say... Just talk more with your mobile phone, just buy new models, it keeps me working ;-)
    • I've got a GPRS phone (a Nokia 8310) and so far I have not been able to use it on two of the three networks in Australia. I've got a GPRS PCMICA card and its about the same story. Untill I see it work, I'm putting GPRS in the same category as Ponds and Fleischmann's cold fusion.

      The rate I should be paying (assuming it worked), is AU$.22/1000 bytes. I figure thats about about US$117 per megabyte or about 60,000 times what wireless data should cost based on other services.

      Imode works and people can afford it to do the routine things they want to do. Thats why its good.
    • Dude, the buzz is that i-Mode has two great things going for it.

      The equipment rocks. Cell phones in Japan make European phones look like a joke (not to mention the sad phones in the US)

      The content is there. Docomo did an excellent job lining up content providers at the launch and this situation is even better now. Many of the content providers are getting paid for usage thanks to the billing infrastructure Docomo has set up.) Also, setting a compact HMTL web page is very easy and the major website software packages include cHTML capability in the box.

      i-Mode's success won't directly translate to other markets, but I still believe it will be successful relative to the alternatives.
      • As an aside, a major reason the content to i-mode and the business model is so good is that the editor in chief, Mari Matsunaga, was specifically chosen for having never used the internet and hating mobile phones! She previously worked editing classified ads mags, so good at lots of info in a small space.
      • True, true.

        I have a DoCoMo 503i, which is just one generation behind state-of-the art.

        It has a full-color display, sends and recieves email (of course), has iMode internet access (I have /. bookmarked, and can read in on the train), iAppli which is for games and stuff, (but I don't use it because you have to pay for all the good downloads).

        Then the optional add-ons:
        I got a USB adapter that attaches to the bottom and lets me attach it to my laptop, which works as a portable modem (only 56k, but broadband phones should be available Real Soon Now). It also lets me up and download content to the phone (haven't done much with this.)
        You can also get a digital camera that fits into the speaker jack. You can set pictures you take as your "wallpaper", or attach them to emails or web form submissions.

        I had a brief contract with an iMode content provider here in Japan who ran a sort of sex-chat BBS. My job was to go through the database and delete all the pictures of people's genitals that they took with their phone-camera while on the john, on the train, etc. (Blatant offers of prostitution and pictures of naughty bits were against the site's policy.)
    • I must say that one reason we hear don't have those kind of phones is that it's not economical for mobile phone manufactures to sell phones with advanched technology.
      It would have been economical if the networks wasn't using ancient GSM-technology..

      It's my oppinion that GPRS won't stand a chance put up against I-mode. The GPRS-standard has potential, but for it to reach the speeds it are capable of the GSM-networks needs upgrading (big time!). Since GPRS uses the GSM-networks it has to compete for bandwidth with normal phone calls and SMS traffic. As long as there are few users no phone-company are going to dedicate bandwidth to GPRS when the network is already in dire need of upgrading. With only a small amount of bandwidth available you won't get much speed on GPRS phones, and this will effect the demand for phones with GPRS support.

      I-mode on the other hand starts from scratch, starting with coverage in the big cities and expanding from there. At the same time the market is flooded with cheap, colorfull and fancy devices with loads of online services.

      • GPRS is simply an extension of GSM. Upgrading the network is mostly a matter of upgrading the software in the base stations. As for competition of GPRS packets with phone calls, this can be done dynamically based on the current demand for traffic. When I was testing GPRS s i-mode is not tied to a specific bearer technology, as long as it is packet-based. i-mode can be implemented on top of GPRS (Europe, US) as well as PDC-P (Japan). So a combination of i-mode and GPRS is useful.

        What you are describing in the last paragraph sound more like the FOMA service based on 3G. i-mode can and does work on top of that as well.

        • You are right about the upgrade to GRPS, but what I meant was that when the network is already strained to its limits, it will need an upgrade before any serious use of GPRS is possible. And due to the nature of regular phone signals GPRS will always loose if time-slots are dedicated dynamically.

          But on the part of I-mode I stand corrected.. :) But I'm not sure about I-mode over GPRS, I-Mode needs a fast network to become a hit in Europe.. But time will tell.. :)

    • I can't understand what is this buzz with Imode, it really isn't so speacial in technical terms.

      The technical design really doesn't matter consumers. It's what it gives them. If they get content and features they want, they will buy it. The problem is that what slashdotters want is often different from the general public.

      - Scott

  • ATT and NTT DOCOMO announced [att.com] a strategic partnership way back in November 2000, " to develop the next generation of mobile multimedia services on a global-standard, high-speed wireless network...As part of the agreement, AT&T Wireless will license from NTT DoCoMo itsi-mode technology platform." As well, over the past few weeks regular advertisements have appeared in the NYT and WSJ promoting the IPO that mention a nationwide roll-out of i-mode in the US.

    I still don't really see what the big fuss is about these next generation services. The two basic constraints are bandwidth and device. I bet that ATT uses G2.5 technology to bring about this nationwide roll out, G3 is just too cost prohibitive right now. In that case, you will not receive a high-latency network connection with a theortical thouroughput of ~128kbps. If you have ever used DSL, you will not tolerate this for general web surfing. The bigger problem, imho, is that a cell phone makes a lousy interface to use the internet. The screen is, by definition, far too small. There is no easy way of typing in text. I really believe in the Palm.net [palm.net] approach with applets that cache most data on the handheld device conducting database queries to provide location and time-sensative information. Especially with the new i705 keyboard, it is easy to input web addresses. I think in the short and medium terms that people will receive certain high-value services, like email and location/time sensative databases, on a handheld and will either wait for home/office/hotel/school for wired internet use or will use wi-fi to connect at high traffic areas like Starbucks [starbucks.com] or airports [wayport.com]. Just my two cents.

    • 3G only makes sense in a population density like Japan has. Somewhat like Ricochet, it was only practicle in big urban areas, not places like the UP of Michigan.
    • The screen is, by definition, far too small. There is no easy way of typing in text.

      The Nokia phones have remarkably effective predictive text entry systems using the standard keypads. Simple text messages are quite practical.

      - Scott
  • ...trying to browse the internet on a grainy little screen. PDAs and cell phones might work for accessing little tidbits such as stocks and scores and weather, but in the long run, people are going to want complete moble access to the web, and that isn't going to happen on tiny two-inch screens. However, notebook computers still aren't convenient enough to check the web quickly out on the street, and tablet PCs are still too bulky for my tastes.

    I'm looking for a screen with about an area of a jeweled CD case. Not much thicker than that, either. Granted, that wouldn't fit immediately in your pocket like a cell phone, but I see the device as a separate component that works with your phone to provide access on the road and your wireless network at home for connection there.

    Until then, accessing the web on my cell phone isn't going to be very appealing to me.

  • I think a lot of people are missing the reason why i-mode is so popular in Japan.

    Probably 90% of the sites that people access with their phones are sites tailored to be viewed on those phones. News, weather and stock prices are obvious ones. Less obvious, and maybe unique to Japan, are train maps and schedules (enter your current station, destination and time you want to get there, and itll spit it all out), and small games and things to read during the long commute.

    People who want to access the rest of the internet use PCs, just like anyone else. Serious mobile users don't connect with i-mode, they use PHS or 3G networks which offer significantly higher speeds. i-mode and other similar services here serve a market created by them, not one that existed before.

  • Wasted and baked yet still squishy (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Graymalkin ( 13732 ) on Sunday March 03, 2002 @02:14PM (#3101722)
    I think 99% of people are missing the point as to what i-mode is. It is not an internet phone although there are portals so users can get on the internet. While i-mode sites use a heavily tweaked version of HTML they are housed on a proprietary network much like online services used to be in the US before connections to the internet were the big thing. Most of the pay content on the service is hosted either by NNT DoCoMo themselves or by third parties that charge fees to your phone's account.

    I really don't think i-mode is going to take off in the US for the simple reason that it doesn't offer its target market, teenagers, anything they don't already have enough of. In Japan i-mode is THE means of communicado for teens, in Europe SMS services on phones is widely popular. In the US however more teens are using PCs and landline telephones. In the US local phone calls cost little more than a line fee which puts the net cost of internet access at the cost of the phone line plus the twenty bucks or so for an ISP. Cellular service on the other hand costs us an arm and a leg and there's no one standard that all phones here use. US based cellular providers also charge differently than their European and Japanese counterparts. Landlines in Europe and Japan are much more expensive then those in the US. One market has cheap landlines while the other has cheap wireless. This is specifically why i-mode isn't going to take off in the US. Almost everyone that wants one has a PC with internet access and most teenagers have at least one e-mail address and talk to at least a fraction of their friends over the internet. It is highly doubtful they're going to get their parents to fork over them oney for an expensive cell phone that costs extra to use the i-mode or SMS service on. With only a handful of people using the service it becomes a Catch-22, no one uses the service so no one wants to get it because their freidns don't have it. If NNT changed i-mode's structure to better fit in the US it would be little better than the shitty services we already have. Part of i-mode's success is its homogeneous nature. Most pay services on it are cleared by NNT just like AOL used to clear companies to offer services on their network. The other aspect of its success is the fact NNT has had exclusive license over i-mode for the past couple years and will continue to for a few more. Nobody can come in and break i-mode's style quite yet by offering a different type of service. This is detrimental to the industry as we've seen in the US. We're lucky to use our phones for anything more than yelling at one another over the din of our surroundings. NNT might pull off i-mode here but I really don't think they will or can. The market is just too different here than it is in Japan and if i-mode becomes remotely popular a competitor is going to come out with an incompatible i-mode knock off which will fragment the market and this will repeat ad infinitum any time someone innovates in the market.
    • Actually there *are* competitors to iMode-- the biggest are aU [kddi.com] (offered by KDDI), J-Phone [j-phone.com], and Tsuka [tu-ka.co.jp] (which I think may have merged with aU... but don't hold me to that). These companies' market shares are dwarfed by DoCoMo's, but they are not insignificant in the least. They keep a decent market share because they are usually cheaper than DoCoMo, and tend to have a lot of innovations before DoCoMo does (I got an aU phone because they had a waterproof/shockproof model. One of the three was also first to market with a digital camera built into the phone, letting you email photos immediately to friends).

      Email for all of the manufacturers' phones are interoperable, because it's all just plain old email. All of them have color screens and let you browse the web. Only DoCoMo has specific i-Mode sites, but that just means that you go to different pay site to get your horoscope or check the weather or download tunes if you have a non-DoCoMo phone.

      Actually, from what I've seen on the street from friends, the iMode sites aren't a big deal. All that everyone really wants is email service. The rest is just fluff and icing. The reason that DoCoMo is so big is that they have the biggest marketing budget, which makes it easier for them to set DoCoMo phones as the "coolest" and most "professional" in the minds of consumers.

      I don't know that DoCoMo itself will be a huge hit in the States, but if they aren't then it will be due to marketing blunders like overpricing. The services that they offer (real email to your cell phone being the biggest) will definitely catch on, because it's just so damn convenient once you start using it. And it saves lots of cash, too, because it's always cheaper to send a cell-to-cell email than it is to talk when just a 1-line email will suffice.

      Land-based lines are great when your butt is parked in front of a PC, but people who don't stay parked there makes for a pretty big market as well... :-)
    • Inter-carrier SMS is now enabled for some US wireless operators, and they are already seeing increases in revenues (big surprise, the European operators enabled this a long time ago...). So don't be surprised if SMS takes off in the US as well.

      The US market is different, largely due to regulation as you point out, but people are increasingly mobile, particularly teenagers, so SMS and some mobile internet applications (chat, dating, multi-player games, etc.) are probably going to take off in the US as well as Europe.

      As for an exclusive license - don't know where you get that from, the Japanese competitors to i-mode have similar services and I think now have the ability to interoperate with i-mode to some extent. What's harder to replicate is the end-to-end specification of phones, protocols, servers, billing models and content services so that they all work together.

      • DoCoMo used to, of course this has probably changed being as I don't as a matter of course keep up with their wheelings and dealings, be the only one to offer i-mode service in Japan. At least that is how I understood it which maybe I'm flat wrong on that.

        As for SMS in the US I'm skeptical as to whether is even has the possibility of catching on. Because landlines are so prevelant here I think there is a natural prejudice towards phones as being voice communication devices. Along with crappy phones and sparse availability I think that has kept data services largely off American phones. Looking around and cell phone offers the majority of deals areh aving to do with oodles of talk time, wireless internet and whatnot are pretty rare. My phone has internet access but I don't know anyone else whose got wireless internet as well. If providers wanted to make SMS big here I think they'd have to use Blackberry type devices instead of adding the functionality to cell phones. Maybe I'm misjudging the market for SMS service but I don't see kids running around pecking away like mad on their cell phones OR Blackberries here.
    • It is not an internet phone although there are portals so users can get on the internet. While i-mode sites use a heavily tweaked version of HTML they are housed on a proprietary network much like online services used to be in the US before connections to the internet were the big thing.

      No they aren't. NTT DoCoMo runs a gateway system, something like a WAP gateway, that fetches pages using HTTP. Most i-mode sites are hosted on ordinary web servers connected to the Internet. A site operator can set restrictions on the web server so that it will only serve i-mode pages to addresses assigned to the gateway. Site operators that wish to have more security, such as banks, can have a dedicated link to the gateway instead. (Except for the latest models, i-mode phones do not support encryption.)

      DoCoMo runs an i-mode portal, the i-menu, and most users stick to the sites listed on this. However, all i-mode phones allow access to and bookmarking of unofficial 'katte' sites by URL.

      Most of the pay content on the service is hosted either by NNT DoCoMo themselves or by third parties that charge fees to your phone's account.

      No it isn't. DoCoMo only runs the subscription and billing system. When the i-mode gateway sends an HTTP request to an official site (one that's on the i-menu), it includes a subscriber ID which the site can use for access control and customisation.

      • So I don't live in Japan, I'm too tall for that country anyways. As I understand it WAP penetration on i-mode is still relatively sparse compared to the overall number of i-mode users. As for the access control and whatnot through the WAP gateway I sort of got it right, in spirit if nothing else. The point is NTT controls all access to i-mode, the WAP gateways are run by NTT and thus everyone (the katte sites) who wants to offer i-mode service has got to clear it through NTT and then the access if it is billed gets billed to the users i-mode account.
        • So I don't live in Japan, I'm too tall for that country anyways.

          Neither do I, but since I've had to write software to work with i-mode I made sure to do my research and find the important technical specs and mailing lists.

          As I understand it WAP penetration on i-mode is still relatively sparse compared to the overall number of i-mode users. As for the access control and whatnot through the WAP gateway I sort of got it right, in spirit if nothing else.

          I'm sorry, but you really didn't. Japanese i-mode doesn't use WAP at all. European i-mode appears to make use of some parts of WAP 2.0, but the Japanese service is proprietary.

          The point is NTT controls all access to i-mode, the WAP gateways are run by NTT and thus everyone (the katte sites) who wants to offer i-mode service has got to clear it through NTT and then the access if it is billed gets billed to the users i-mode account.

          No, the katte sites are entirely unofficial - there is no need to get any kind of approval from DoCoMo to make a site available by URL entry. DoCoMo bills for access to all sites (and for email) on a per-packet basis (except that a few hundred packets per month are included in the i-mode subscription).

  • Should you be impressed after reading this article?
    I think not. Why? Well, let me tell you.

    What you hear of Japanese companies in America is twisted, incorrect, or at best improperly translated from Japanese double-speak which is used to promote losing services.

    So, you are drooling to come to Japan and start using DoCoMo's "wireless internet service" while taking a bus to your office, right? Wrong. The service (even the current 9.6kbps, max packet size 10k, never actually reaching that speed) gets really shitty during rush hour when all the office workers get on their phones to call their boss to tell them they will be late to work because of another traffic jam.

    So, what's the appeal for this pathetic "service" that Japs have to pay out of their ass for? I really don't know. Maybe everyone there has too much money to waste on shit, or something like that. A latest 503i mobile phone with "java" (Don't get me started on that one, 10k .jar limit, and JAVA of all things?), will cost your average jap approx $500 for a one-year contract including the phone. You get some few minutes for free to use up each month, and then you pay for every minute of outgoing calls. Each "i-mode" call is billed by the packet, which means if you actually plan to do anything serious on it (which is impossible, the content available on i-mode is worthless to a general user), you'll be paying for it, as well.

    Let's examine DoCoMo's java phones again. They are being marketed as "cool, useful, secure devices to do your online banking, play games, and access the internet". What they don't tell you that you are still stuck with pathetic 9.6kbps (ideal, usually much worse), 10k packet limit (don't try to browse slashdot on that phone), and that Java applets can't access network except for HTTP (and only to the originating server) which means you can forget about peer to peer games (or any kind of intelligent games, wtf can you fit into 10k of Java? If it was 10k of ASM, sure, but java? Hah).

    Another words, don't be too excited about hearing these news. I'd say, if you really care, boycott this shit and tell the japs to go back to their country with that I-mode crap. Support ricochet or whatever other True American company is there to provide you service - at least their CEO has a normal view at the real world, and not an idealistic "I'll make it and everyone will use it because I made it" view that most Japanese company presidents have about their product.

    Another not very well known fact, is that these "sales" of i-mode units that DoCoMo claims on their quarterly reports are mostly "push" sales to absolutely unsuspecting customers. Imagine, you own a 2 or 3 years old phone, which breaks because you drop it in the bathtub. Ideally, you'd want to get exact same model, because you like it and you want to keep using it. The catch is that it's 3 years old, and DoCoMo doesn't sell 3 years old phones anymore. Incidentally, they have this nice and new 503 model which has i-mode, java, and god-knows-what-the-fuck-else that you will never use or even know how to use (503 models come with a ~400+ page manual). You have no choice, and you buy the new phone. You talk on it about 10-20 times a month, and never even touch anything related to I-mode. DoCoMo salesman rubs his hands, puts another cross on the sheet posted in his office where every employee must write how many phones they sold a week, and DoCoMo gets another "i-mode" user to report on their quarterly sales reports.

    Why do you think DoCoMo says they are selling so many i-mode headsets now? Duh, because that's all they sell these days.

    Thanks for listening,
    • Another words, don't be too excited about hearing these news. I'd say, if you really care, boycott this shit and tell the japs to go back to their country with that I-mode crap. Support ricochet or whatever other True American company is there to provide you service

      Ignoring the shades of racism for a moment, I think you're missing the fact that i-Mode's primary purpose is not to browse things like Slashdot. As I understand it, most of i-Mode's lure in japan is information and entertainment that is given the i-Mode seal of approval. They are made in HTML, but they are constantly evaluated by DoCoMo. Their content has to be good to keep the seal of approval.

      A lot of the content is entertainment. Screen savers, graphics, trinkets animations and such. These people are not downloading and compiling kernels. People that technology has to revolve around "real work" or prove its usefulness would probably not understand the lure.

      Richocet is a wireless internet service designed to use in conjunction with laptops. As far as I can tell, this has nothing to do with i-Mode.

      All of my information on this topic comes from a Wired article that I read a few months ago.

      You have no choice, and you buy the new phone. You talk on it about 10-20 times a month, and never even touch anything related to I-mode.

      This is the exact opposite impression the Wired article gives. It says that i-Mode use is rampant in Japan, and text messaging exceeds voice call usage -- largely due to the fact that the culture sees it as inconsiderate to impose yourself on other people by contact phone calls in public.

      Again, I'm just going on what Wired said.

      - Scott
  • It is able to do this only because NTT bought Verio's network backbone. (I was told that by doing so, it got around some specific restriction on offering service in the US.)
    I work for a Japanese telephone company, and I'm probably not supposed to say anything about this, but the acquisition of Verio by Japan, and the heavy investment in GlobalCrossing Asia by Chinese interests is just the beginning.
    American telecommunications infrastructure is just so cheap, and companies are going bankrupt so rapidly, that companies like mine would be stupid not to start buying it up wholesale.

    It's not like you can do anything about it, but prepare to be invaded.
  • Phones that can do everything web related won't make a big impact in the US. Almost everybody, or everybody interested in being connect has bought themselves a PC (Mac, WebTV, etc.) that these phones will do little for them. I, for one, have internet access at school, work (from where I am posting now), any public library, and home. What would I need access in my pocket for? Another point to this is that the tech community (read geeks)are usually the main buyers of gadgets, and why would they want to subject themselves to browsing on a 2.5" screen rather than their 21" CRT?

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