(keitai-l) Re: I-mode in Europe

Hi all,

Another addition to the I-Mode in Europe discussion:

Decan said:
>While the article submitted by  Kristian Solberg carrys a quote by

>>Amos Kater, innovation manager for mobile data at KPN:

>>I-Mode has proven itself as a technology and we are looking for a way >to
>bring i-Mode applications to Europe," he said. "At the moment there >are
>only few GSM cHTML phones available but we do not expect that to >become a
>problem.<

>Which seems to suggest that I-mode will be introduced on GSM.


Amos Kater of KPN said "... we are looking for a way to bring I-Mode
applications to Europe". Of course, Amos has
to say this because of the relationship with NTT DoCoMo. He could hardly
say "Hey, we definately don't want to
bring in I-Mode because it has no chance to become popular in a market
where the technically more advanced
standard WAP, that is also used by our competitors that have 55% market
share, already has a fast growing number
of customers."

In my view it is much about content. The availability of content dictates
the sales of handsets, and the sales
of handsets will dictate the availability of content. In Europe, where the
de facto standard is WAP (read
WML), it will be difficult to push a new standard which is not compatible
with this de facto standard.

If you have market power you might be able to pull it off. But even with
all it's stakes in other companies
(KPN Orange in Belgium, E-Plus in Germany, Pannon in Hungary and UMC in the
Ukraine), and it's own market
share combined, KPN Mobile has not more than 10 million customers. Combined
with Hutchinson it remains a very
small number. I don't think the competitors of KPN are willing to support a
KPN/NTT DoCoMo/Hutchinson-proprietary standard.
And the first-mover advantage that I-Mode had in Japan, is not available in
Europe.

But let's move on and think about what I-Mode offers over WAP. With respect
for the popularity of it in Japan: absolutely
nothing. Yes, despite it is technically more advanced WAP lacks color for
the moment, but are all Japanese mobile phones
color devices? Phone.com's new micro-browser supports color and will be a
question of time until these browsers are build
into the European handsets. If it boils down to marketing, why don't you
just take the way I-Mode was marketed and use that to market WAP?
And yes, I have followed the discussion last week with interest.

The trick might be to build a "dual-mode" browser in the phone: people will
just access services, not even knowing that they are WML
or cHTML. The sites with cHTML formatted content can, however, not be
accessed
through a standard WAP phone. But who will manufacture these phones? Nokia
and Ericsson are very popular,
they will be able to build it in because they manufacture their own
micro-browsers. Nokia has even recently
introduced an I-Mode phone to the Japanese market. But do they want to
invest extra effort in such a dual-mode browser,
and will they gain profit from marketing an I-Mode niche-market focussed
phone? The Japanese manufacturers (Sony is also popular)
could build it, they could leverage on the Microsoft browser, something
which Sony already does. But one could question if Phone.Com
will include cHTML in it's browser, which is licensed to  about 80% of the
mobile phone manufacturers, since that will weaken the
strong position in WAP browsers that Phone.Com has.

Please mind that until three months ago, the availability of cheap handsets
was blocking the popularity of WAP in Europe.
Inexpensive WAP phones such as the Siemens C35i has just been introduced.
These are the phones for the masses
and those masses will make WAP popular. When youth catches the trend it
will boom, just as happened with SMS, and within several months
from now we will see the same growth rates as in Japan.

Best regards,
Paul Eijkemans


Please know, especially for you Gerhard, that this e-mail reflects a
personal opinion and is in no way an opinion of the company I work for.