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NTT to Start i-mode Services in U.S.
Vertigo Donkey writes: "Reuters has a report on NTT DoCoMo Inc.'s debut on the London and New York stock markets on Friday. What does this mean for the US? Well, according to a (very) brief article in the Japan Times, DoCoMo plans to offer 'its i-mode Internet-capable mobile phone service in the United States before the end of this year.'"
While this is great I suppose, I am surprised that they will not begin with the usual heavy-weight mobile-phone-friendly countries, such as Finland, Sweden..
Anyway, depending on how they package their services and what you get for the price, that may be very interesting and very cool. I'm actually excited to see that finally EU/US will be catching up with some Japanese gadgets :)
I think it means that the $400 I just spent for my Kyocera smart phone is for naught. I really wish that the cell vendors over here in the states would get their shit together and offer us something decent. How about simply bringing us to the same level as European cell service? I'm not sure that this imode internet phone is that useful though. All the article really says is that DoCoMo is contracted with AT&T. At least with my phone, I get the Palm OS. Granted, the screen is about 25% smaller, but I can still play solitare in meetings with it quite nicely. And, of course, get all the functional;ity of a Palm PDA plus some cool phone specific apps.
--- Think of it as evolution in action ---
Dokomo is Japanese for "everywhere" so it's a play on words.
ATT and NTT DOCOMO announced a strategic partnership way back in November 2000, " to develop the next generation of mobile multimedia services on a global-standard, high-speed wireless network...As part of the agreement, AT&T Wireless will license from NTT DoCoMo itsi-mode technology platform." As well, over the past few weeks regular advertisements have appeared in the NYT and WSJ promoting the IPO that mention a nationwide roll-out of i-mode in the US.
I still don't really see what the big fuss is about these next generation services. The two basic constraints are bandwidth and device. I bet that ATT uses G2.5 technology to bring about this nationwide roll out, G3 is just too cost prohibitive right now. In that case, you will not receive a high-latency network connection with a theortical thouroughput of ~128kbps. If you have ever used DSL, you will not tolerate this for general web surfing. The bigger problem, imho, is that a cell phone makes a lousy interface to use the internet. The screen is, by definition, far too small. There is no easy way of typing in text. I really believe in the Palm.net approach with applets that cache most data on the handheld device conducting database queries to provide location and time-sensative information. Especially with the new i705 keyboard, it is easy to input web addresses. I think in the short and medium terms that people will receive certain high-value services, like email and location/time sensative databases, on a handheld and will either wait for home/office/hotel/school for wired internet use or will use wi-fi to connect at high traffic areas like Starbucks or airports. Just my two cents.
"...What is good for General Motors is good for America." -Charles Wilson, Secretary of Defense and fmr President of GM
I've got a GPRS phone (a Nokia 8310) and so far I have not been able to use it on two of the three networks in Australia. I've got a GPRS PCMICA card and its about the same story. Untill I see it work, I'm putting GPRS in the same category as Ponds and Fleischmann's cold fusion.
The rate I should be paying (assuming it worked), is AU$.22/1000 bytes. I figure thats about about US$117 per megabyte or about 60,000 times what wireless data should cost based on other services.
Imode works and people can afford it to do the routine things they want to do. Thats why its good.
Dude, the buzz is that i-Mode has two great things going for it.
The equipment rocks. Cell phones in Japan make European phones look like a joke (not to mention the sad phones in the US)
The content is there. Docomo did an excellent job lining up content providers at the launch and this situation is even better now. Many of the content providers are getting paid for usage thanks to the billing infrastructure Docomo has set up.) Also, setting a compact HMTL web page is very easy and the major website software packages include cHTML capability in the box.
i-Mode's success won't directly translate to other markets, but I still believe it will be successful relative to the alternatives.
Those cute little letters mean something in Japanese. It is derived from 'doco demo'. Doko means 'where'. Doko demo means 'anywhere'; hence referring to service you can use anywhere. The first word is used with a sylable from the second word (and of course changing the k to a c). This is a common way of creating new words in Japanese - whether it be standard Japanese words, or new slang or corporate (in this case) branding.
I have also heard of docomo being lengthened into "Do Comunications" as another poster mentioned but I am quite sure this was a marketing slogan and not the origin of the word.
I think 99% of people are missing the point as to what i-mode is. It is not an internet phone although there are portals so users can get on the internet. While i-mode sites use a heavily tweaked version of HTML they are housed on a proprietary network much like online services used to be in the US before connections to the internet were the big thing. Most of the pay content on the service is hosted either by NNT DoCoMo themselves or by third parties that charge fees to your phone's account.
I really don't think i-mode is going to take off in the US for the simple reason that it doesn't offer its target market, teenagers, anything they don't already have enough of. In Japan i-mode is THE means of communicado for teens, in Europe SMS services on phones is widely popular. In the US however more teens are using PCs and landline telephones. In the US local phone calls cost little more than a line fee which puts the net cost of internet access at the cost of the phone line plus the twenty bucks or so for an ISP. Cellular service on the other hand costs us an arm and a leg and there's no one standard that all phones here use. US based cellular providers also charge differently than their European and Japanese counterparts. Landlines in Europe and Japan are much more expensive then those in the US. One market has cheap landlines while the other has cheap wireless. This is specifically why i-mode isn't going to take off in the US. Almost everyone that wants one has a PC with internet access and most teenagers have at least one e-mail address and talk to at least a fraction of their friends over the internet. It is highly doubtful they're going to get their parents to fork over them oney for an expensive cell phone that costs extra to use the i-mode or SMS service on. With only a handful of people using the service it becomes a Catch-22, no one uses the service so no one wants to get it because their freidns don't have it. If NNT changed i-mode's structure to better fit in the US it would be little better than the shitty services we already have. Part of i-mode's success is its homogeneous nature. Most pay services on it are cleared by NNT just like AOL used to clear companies to offer services on their network. The other aspect of its success is the fact NNT has had exclusive license over i-mode for the past couple years and will continue to for a few more. Nobody can come in and break i-mode's style quite yet by offering a different type of service. This is detrimental to the industry as we've seen in the US. We're lucky to use our phones for anything more than yelling at one another over the din of our surroundings. NNT might pull off i-mode here but I really don't think they will or can. The market is just too different here than it is in Japan and if i-mode becomes remotely popular a competitor is going to come out with an incompatible i-mode knock off which will fragment the market and this will repeat ad infinitum any time someone innovates in the market.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
I have also heard of docomo being lengthened into "Do Comunications" as another poster mentioned but I am quite sure this was a marketing slogan and not the origin of the word.
Actually, it's "Do Communications over the Mobile Network", though I don't doubt that "DoCoMo" came first.
It is able to do this only because NTT bought Verio's network backbone. (I was told that by doing so, it got around some specific restriction on offering service in the US.)
I work for a Japanese telephone company, and I'm probably not supposed to say anything about this, but the acquisition of Verio by Japan, and the heavy investment in GlobalCrossing Asia by Chinese interests is just the beginning.
American telecommunications infrastructure is just so cheap, and companies are going bankrupt so rapidly, that companies like mine would be stupid not to start buying it up wholesale.
It's not like you can do anything about it, but prepare to be invaded.
"Reactionaries must be deprived of the right to voice their opinions; only the people have that right." - Mao
True, true.
/. bookmarked, and can read in on the train), iAppli which is for games and stuff, (but I don't use it because you have to pay for all the good downloads).
I have a DoCoMo 503i, which is just one generation behind state-of-the art.
It has a full-color display, sends and recieves email (of course), has iMode internet access (I have
Then the optional add-ons:
I got a USB adapter that attaches to the bottom and lets me attach it to my laptop, which works as a portable modem (only 56k, but broadband phones should be available Real Soon Now). It also lets me up and download content to the phone (haven't done much with this.)
You can also get a digital camera that fits into the speaker jack. You can set pictures you take as your "wallpaper", or attach them to emails or web form submissions.
I had a brief contract with an iMode content provider here in Japan who ran a sort of sex-chat BBS. My job was to go through the database and delete all the pictures of people's genitals that they took with their phone-camera while on the john, on the train, etc. (Blatant offers of prostitution and pictures of naughty bits were against the site's policy.)
"Reactionaries must be deprived of the right to voice their opinions; only the people have that right." - Mao
Actually it's spelled DoCoMo, not dokomo.
It's actually a phrase from English -- " Dot Com Mode ". When abbreviated in that cute Japanese syllabic way, DoCoMo!
It's a happy coincidence that it is pronounced similar to dokomo (everywhere), as you said. I hope that comes true. I can't wait for DoCoMo to be available in the USA!!
Dr. Demento On The 'Net!
Another words, don't be too excited about hearing these news. I'd say, if you really care, boycott this shit and tell the japs to go back to their country with that I-mode crap. Support ricochet or whatever other True American company is there to provide you service
Ignoring the shades of racism for a moment, I think you're missing the fact that i-Mode's primary purpose is not to browse things like Slashdot. As I understand it, most of i-Mode's lure in japan is information and entertainment that is given the i-Mode seal of approval. They are made in HTML, but they are constantly evaluated by DoCoMo. Their content has to be good to keep the seal of approval.
A lot of the content is entertainment. Screen savers, graphics, trinkets animations and such. These people are not downloading and compiling kernels. People that technology has to revolve around "real work" or prove its usefulness would probably not understand the lure.
Richocet is a wireless internet service designed to use in conjunction with laptops. As far as I can tell, this has nothing to do with i-Mode.
All of my information on this topic comes from a Wired article that I read a few months ago.
You have no choice, and you buy the new phone. You talk on it about 10-20 times a month, and never even touch anything related to I-mode.
This is the exact opposite impression the Wired article gives. It says that i-Mode use is rampant in Japan, and text messaging exceeds voice call usage -- largely due to the fact that the culture sees it as inconsiderate to impose yourself on other people by contact phone calls in public.
Again, I'm just going on what Wired said.
- Scott
Scott Stevenson
Tree House Ideas
I can't understand what is this buzz with Imode, it really isn't so speacial in technical terms.
The technical design really doesn't matter consumers. It's what it gives them. If they get content and features they want, they will buy it. The problem is that what slashdotters want is often different from the general public.
- Scott
Scott Stevenson
Tree House Ideas
i-mode is not a protocol on the level of GPRS, in fact it can use GPRS (and UMTS [3G] and the Japanese PDC-P) as a transport. In fact i-mode is being deployed by KPN in the Netherlands and will run over GPRS there (some other deployments should also happen e.g. in Germany).
i-mode includes its own HTML variant (cHTML, quite close to standard HTML unlike WAP's WML), and some sort of application level protocol (proprietary to NTT I think). This runs over a packet mode layer, which is analogous to IP but designed for wireless (shorter headers etc - spectrum is expensive). i-mode also includes (crucially) a content-based billing system for official providers (NTT approved), and data transfer based (i.e. Kbytes) billing for unofficial providers (NTT makes a lot of money out of these).
Most importantly, NTT designed the phones and told the manufacturers to make them - the NTT logo is on the phone, the manufacturer isn't (hard to replicate anywhere except Japan). The end to end i-mode architecture is a bit like MacOS - quite proprietary but it's very easy to use (see http://www.useit.com/ for an article on this). Also, NTT takes only 9% of the official content providers' revenues, compared to the Euro wireless providers who typically take about half for premium SMS services. Guess which one has more providers, more revenues and more profits...
3G isn't a protocol either, but CDMA2000 and UMTS are suites of protocols that conform to the ITU-T's '3G vision' - aka IMT-2000, which is even more fluffy and vaporous than 3G is!
I mostly agree with you about i-mode vs WAP (see my post elsewhere about WAP's brokenness). The phones in the UK are nowhere near i-mode or i-appli in ease of use, and FOMA is further ahead still. The new 3G phones coming out this year in Europe may give FOMA a run for its money, but ease of use is still the critical issue - i-mode and FOMA seem to be designed on the MacOS model, i.e. an end to end design that is highly usable. European and US 3G won't have that level of integration.
However, GPRS is packet-mode and now rolled out on 3 out of 4 UK networks (not sure about one2one), and in many other European countries. It's faster than i-mode's PDC-P (which is 9.6 Kbps), up to 30-50 Kbps depending on cell site, following wind, etc. And of course GPRS is always-on, like PDC-P.
Was that meant to be funny? DoCoMo is the name of the company, and it really is a play on 'dokomo', though it's also supposed to be short for something like 'Do Communicate by Mobile'. The hypertext/email service is called 'i-mode', in which the 'i' doesn't have a fixed meaning but can be taken as 'information', 'Internet', or any number of other things.