I do agree that Nokia does not support i-mode well in Europe.
The interaction of browsing and email is crucial for the i-mode
success and adoption.
Natsuno-san announced in Cannes at 3GSM that later in 2004, probably
just before christmas in Q4/04, we will see the N900i in Europe
which is one of the latest FOMA devices in Japan. He said: "With this phone
in Europe the device gap will be eliminated". Natsuno-san sold
40.000 units of the N900i the first day of launch.
Maybe after this event Nokia et al. will develop fully i-mode compliant
devices.
At 3GSM in Cannes the CEOs of KPN Mobile and Bouygues Telecom all
agreed that i-mode has reached the momentum now.
So if Natsuno-san keeps his promises, i-mode will play a big role
in 2005 in Europe.
BTW, Arun Sarin, Vodafone's CEO, said that Vodafone Live! has got
5 million users in 16 countries now (not counting Japan I believe).
So this compares not too badly with 2 million i-moders outside of Japan.
Especially if you look at the massive marketing budget Vodafone spent
since the launch of its Live! service.
Best from Berlin,
Jan.
--------------------
Jan Michael Hess
www.mobileeconomy.de
www.mobiliser.org
> > The nokia and Siemens phones sold in GErmany are not true i-mode
> > phones.
> > They only have a i-mode HTML browser (but do not comply to all iHTML
> > features), they do not support well i-mode mail, and ringtones format
> > are different. DoJa is not existing in those phones, etc. So you cannot
> > access to the full set of i-mode available content, and the very
> > important and ARPU generator link between i-mode web pages and e-mail
> > is
> > not working properly.
>
> So we can say that Nokia is not really supporting i-mode yet.
>
> Some i-mode enabled Nokia and Siemens phones could make the difference
> for the service that is the best in content and model but weak in
> handsets
> options.
>
> I hope to see this as i-mode could provide the badly needed spark
> for the mobile services in europe.
>
> I think this is not something new for you. ;-)
>
> Cheers
Received on Tue Mar 2 13:55:46 2004