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I-mode: hype springs eternal? |
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Thursday, 19 July 2007 |
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NTT DoCoMo of Japan can only watch and weep while Australian and UK mobile operators ditch its 3G multimedia template. Meanwhile, DoCoMo at last takes Blackberry to its bosom.
Is this an i-mode implosion? Not exactly. The world’s first functional 3G multimedia template is merely losing its momentum as the weight of technology development catches up with it. Telstra in Australia and Spanish-owned 02 in the UK are reported to be ditching I-mode functionality from their multimedia offerings. The Japanese carrier’s i-mode package, once revolutionary and with handsets to match, looks like yesterday’s technology just now. It’s 2.95G, at best.
DoCoMo itself gave some weight to this argument on Tuesday when it announced plans to support Blackberry devices over its network: “Customers using the BlackBerry 8707h will benefit from new features — Japanese input for e-mails (including text prediction) and other personal information management (PIM) applications and a Japanese screen menu — that enhance already existing capabilities such as reading Japanese e-mails and browsing Japanese websites. These developments accommodate the needs of customers intending to deploy the smartphone in a Japanese-language environment.”
Japan’s users would not have needed this functionality in the hey day of i-mode. It reportedly has more than 40m customers in Japan. These will doubtless be migrated to full multimedia services as can be accessed from a RIM-produced Blackberry and other smartphones. For Japan, the failure to migrate a pioneering module of services into an all-conquering one will be viewed in some quarters as a national industrial disgrace.
Jim Chalmers
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