In January, Telecom Italia Mobile, NTT DoCoMo of Japan and KPN of the
Netherlands struck a three-way agreement to develop mobile phone internet
services across Europe.
Each of the three backers plan to invest an initial sum of about $30m to
build two development centres in Italy and the Netherlands where 80
research staff will develop applications based on i-mode. TIM has already
had technical and marketing agreement with DoCoMo for the last three and
half years, but has only be exchanging engineers and there was no equity
involved.
Apparently, the partners have agreed to carve up European markets between
them, allowing KPN to exploit the developments from the joint venture in
Holland, Belgium, Germany and probably the UK, while TIM concentrates on
Spain, France, Italy, Austria and Turkey. They have also agreed that the
new centres of excellence will have exclusive supply agreements with the
founding shareholders for three years, after which the joint venture will
be free to sell services to rival operators.
As far as I am aware, KPN plan to offer an I-mode branded service in the
Netherlands from this September. Plans to launch the I-mode brand into the
UK market in early 2002 may suffer a setback as a result of the fact that
BT owned Securicor has already registered 19 or so variations on the name
I-mode.
Phil
|------------------------+------------------------+------------------------|
| | rolf van widenfelt | |
| | <rolf@pizzicato.com> | To: |
| | Sent by: | keitai-l@appelsiini.n|
| | keitai-l-bounce@appel| et |
| | siini.net | cc: |
| | | Subject: |
| | 27/04/01 09:16 | (keitai-l) Re: iMode |
| | Please respond to | in Europe |
| | keitai-l | |
| | | |
|------------------------+------------------------+------------------------|
from the little i've been able to gather from the vague press releases,
i-mode outside of Japan will probably first launch in Northern Europe with
KPN
in the Netherlands.
ATT (US) will also launch an i-mode service, supposedly starting with
Seattle.
my personal guess is that ATT will be slow to get it rolling, and KPN will
launch first.
i have also heard Italy (Telecom Italia) mentioned,
but i would be surprised if they are first.
does anyone have more info?
any info about i-mode in Hong Kong or perhaps Korea?
-rolf
"Joe Kantalainen" <joe.kantalainen@sonera.com> writes:
> Hi,
>
> Someone was asking about the iMode in Europe. I believe I heard that it's
> been tested in Italy. Also I heard that there is plans to launch it in
> Italy. Not 100% sure, but almost.
>
> joe
[ Did you check the archives? http://www.appelsiini.net/keitai-l/ ]
[ Did you check the archives? http://www.appelsiini.net/keitai-l/ ]
Received on Fri Apr 27 11:26:50 2001