Hey how come iMode never comes up in these discussions of wireless internet? OK, I know it's a proprietary protocol, but the point is that a) it works, and b) it gets used.
Having just worked in Japan for 6 months the thing I couldn't help noticing was that everybody's phone was much cooler than any of the ones available at home: lighter, smaller, cheaper, more functions, longer battery life etc(not just that they were shaped like Hello Kitty) and that most of my mates at work had readable colour screens on their phones and used iMode all the time for useful stuff like checking timetables, getting prices, getting weather reports etc etc, and the connection prices didn't seem so high (well, compared to the cost of living in Japan, perhaps that doesn't mean much). The week before I returned, DoCoMo reported that they had 20 million iMode users - which seems like a lot to me.
So my question is: why don't DoCoMo set up iMode networks in other countries? IMHO, they'd do well, and we'd finally see some reasonable wireless services.
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Hey how come iMode never comes up in these discussions of wireless internet? OK, I know it's a proprietary protocol, but the point is that
a) it works, and
b) it gets used.
Having just worked in Japan for 6 months the thing I couldn't help noticing was that everybody's phone was much cooler than any of the ones available at home: lighter, smaller, cheaper, more functions, longer battery life etc(not just that they were shaped like Hello Kitty) and that most of my mates at work had readable colour screens on their phones and used iMode all the time for useful stuff like checking timetables, getting prices, getting weather reports etc etc, and the connection prices didn't seem so high (well, compared to the cost of living in Japan, perhaps that doesn't mean much). The week before I returned, DoCoMo reported that they had 20 million iMode users - which seems like a lot to me.
So my question is: why don't DoCoMo set up iMode networks in other countries? IMHO, they'd do well, and we'd finally see some reasonable wireless services.