Slashdot Mirror
DoCoMo To Begin Offering i-mode In Europe
Mike Bouma writes: "Since the launch of the i-mode service in February 1999, i-mode has gained more than 17 million subscribers in Japan. I-mode will soon be released onto the Belgian, German, Italian and Dutch markets as well. NTT DoCoMo will also release an upgraded i-mode sevice called "i appli" for the Japanese market on the 26th of Januari. This year in May DoComo also plans to be the first company to offer G3 mobile phone technology."
For the first article (big fight), the most grevious error was to say that "WML is a subset of XML" and thus rides the wave of XML as a future standard. While I do see XML becoming very popular indeed, the trouble is that WML is a language defined to be XML compliant, and is not a subset! Furthermore, though I've done no programming in it I have attended a few classes at conferences and done a lot of reading on programming WML, and it is not well thought out or easy to use.
Another part I found rather humorous was this paragraph:
One reason why people feel WAP phones are a big let down is that they expect their Internet experience on the WAP phone to be similar (if not better) to that on a PC. This expectation on the part of the users is really not surprising largely because the hype surrounding WAP is so high that it is made out to be something that it?s really not. And, with this kind of unrealistic expectations, the service was bound to fall short.
Only in the computer industry do we have the hubris to assume that because users do not like and cannot understand the service, the solution is to upgrade the users! I think almost by definition, what a customer wants from wireless is realistic. If you can't give it to them (or figure out soemthing they will find useful instead of being told it's useful), then you are not done working yet!
In the second article (Canvas Dreams), I take exception with saying that WAP has "100% industry acceptance". Personally, since DoCoMo is going to start offering service in Europe I think you should consider the "industry" anyone that will be providing service. That means DoCoMo is part of the industry, and thus WAP does not have "100% industry acceptance".
The other facet of that is that while WAP might have a "high" industry acceptance, how high is the customer acceptance? There are plenty of examples where "industries" decided what is best for the customers and the customers all went and did something else, or just ignored the industries altogether.
They also mention the point about land lines being very expensive in Japan - true, but isn't wireless access REALLY popular in Europe, and isn't bandwidth really expesnive there still? Perhaps similar but somewhat different market forces will spread iMode just as wide there as in Japan.
The last article (which is better?) paints a bleaker picture for iMode. But I don't see things that way. Look at the need to create special sites, and the lock in to browsing at sites offered by your service provider, vs. iModes ability to go to any site. Also of course WAP is circuit switched, and iMode is packet based. it seems to me that iMode is going to be able to support more customers using the same bandwith than WAP.
A few last telling points. Go to UseIt and read some of the artciles about usability tests of WAP devices in London. The conclusion he comes to (and one I agree with) is that screen size matters for internet browsing, and that a keypad is not enough of an interface to work with the web. Consider that it took users about 1 - 2 minutes to look up a weather report. One user reported that they could have bought a paper and spent less money to get the information faster!
I like WAP/WML being an industry standard. It's just a shame the industry made such horrible choices. Hopefully for their own sakes the "industry" is flexible enough to switch to a packet based network that works with HTML to some degree.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Here is a link describing on how i-node works. This stuff can get quite cool if you really have access to this technology. (Where are the towers, buddy?). I guess that finally, Europe will finally start reaping from this new technology.
But wait a sec, where is the bill for that UMTS phone I have prepaid!?!
Dodge this !! --Trinity, The Matrix
Service is good, the external modem includes both serial and USB interfaces, and both work beautifully under linux. The modem is a "standard" USB modem and works with the ACM driver; the connection is simply a high-speed PPP connection. It's amazing how liberating the service is, if you have a laptop. It works just about anywhere in the cities with coverage, it's flat-rate, and there are no "roaming fees" letting me travel back East and get online just as I would at home.
I prepaid $825 for a year of service, which works out to $68.75/month - acceptable for my primary connection. It's a bit like wireless ISDN - fast enough for streaming audio or kernel source downloads, but not DSL or cable speeds. At times I've seen >220 kbits/sec, but 80-140 is typical. Latency is too high for shooters (typically 200-600 msec - the problem is the latency fluctuates), but I can listen to a 64kbit shoutcast/icecast MP3 stream while playing gtetrinet without a hitch.
It's not telephone service, and isn't meant to be, which is why it works so well. Who needs G3?
Just one data point in the US,
-Isaac
I am not a lawyer, and this is not legal advice. For Entertainment Purposes Only.
On the other hand, it could be construed as a "Good Thing" because it would encourage competition and give a kickstart to the latent WAP market by demonstrating the more powerful i-mode applications, forcing vendors to adopt to the full WAP specification (as most only do text right now, when WAP fully supports grayscale imaging in spec).
A couple URLs for a comparison between WAP and i-mode are:
Enjoy the reading.
Information is the catalyst for revolution
iMode is going to be horibly expensive to use in an always on mode - much like WAP is now. Admittedly the better markup language will help but without technical details of how the service will be offered I can only see this failing in the same way the WAP has - after all if it's running on a switched circuit then it's just WAP with slightly different protocols and language.
Matt Thompson - Actuality - Insert product here.