(Almost) I-mode Service Coming in April

DJSK8 Mast0r Ralph McDaniels writes: "Looks like NTT DoCoMo Inc's investment in AT&T last year is coming to fruition as this article from allnetdevices.com lays claim to AT&T rolling out i-mode based services repackaged for the U.S. market as m-mode service with Motorola, Sony/Ericcson, Nokia and Siemens offering the requisite phones to take advantage of it. Not quite 3G, but seems on par with the 2.5G services Verizon recently rolled out, though both are a far cry from the 100Mbit/20Mbit 4G services DoCoMo is already working on."

Comments

Better read that more closely

[dagbrown]

Hooray! i-Mode is coming to the USA at long last!

Oh wait:

Applications will include messaging (SMS, instant messaging and email), information services and entertainment. Certain features popular in Japan, such as cartoons, "just wouldn't sell here in the States", and have been eschewed, Blasi said.

Yup, that's right, they're going to launch an i-Mode service, but they're not going to include any of the things that make it cool! Because, of course, being big execs, they know what the American people know better than the American people themselves do. That's why the portals were such roaring successes, after all, right?

Oh wait, it's not even going to really be i-Mode:

"We plan to launch a consumer offering next month," AT&T Wireless spokesperson Ritch Blasi said. "It's not i-mode, it's based on i-mode - the technology and the methods DoCoMo uses in terms of marketing."

Run that one by me again--it's going to be sorta like i-mode, but not really actually i-mode? Just similar in terms of marketing? What does that mean?

Oh, wait, here's what it means:

The US firm will not pay NTT DoCoMo license fees, unlike other NTT DoCoMo partners in Europe, including KPN Mobile in the Netherlands and Germany, both of which launched recently.

It means "We want to launch a service which is kind of like i-mode, only without any of that annoying cool stuff, and without having to pay NTT DoCoMo to license their technology. But we're pretending to be i-mode even while we're disclaiming that we're not so that we can get the right keywords into our press release."

Feh.

Re:Better read that more closely

[badasscat]

The thing about i-mode is that it's not a technology but simply a set of related services. In a sense, it's just a marketing buzzword for a collection of features that are appealing to consumers and have defined the cel phone experience in Japan. Sorta like what AT&T is already trying to do with Mlife here. So, in that way, you don't need to replicate it exactly in the US, since there's nothing precise upon which to base it in the first place. i-mode has been evolving since day one.

What unites all of i-mode's services and features is that they are all extremely easy to use, visually appealing and cheap by design - that includes the handsets (well, except for the "cheap" part), the user interfaces and the available i-mode "sites" (though DoCoMo is careful to *never* use internet terminology - calling i-mode the "wireless web" is fundamentally against what i-mode is all about). At the time i-mode was introduced, these features were all for the most part unique in Japan - as was the business model. But it was the ease of use and general friendliness of i-mode that caused it to catch on.

There's a well-known story about the head of DoCoMo getting the idea for i-mode by handing a random woman in a line a cel phone and asking her what was wrong with it - her answer was that she couldn't figure out how to use it. If AT&T's going to take the cop-out American attitude that they need to sell this service to business users first, they'll fail - i-mode was always a consumer-oriented service.

It's possible that even with significant changes AT&T could still get i-mode right, especially if they listen carefully to DoCoMo - who are pretty tuned in to why i-mode caught on the way it did in Japan. It's not about appealing to business users, and it's not about the "wireless web" - it's simply about connecting people to both each other as well as lots and lots of information and doing it in the easiest to use, most attractive and cheapest way possible. AT&T doesn't need to replicate the Japanese feature set precisely, but they do need to understand what makes i-mode i-mode as opposed to every other wireless web service out there.