Written November 2003 as part of a journalism course.

i-mode in Europe

i-mode is set to storm across Europe by the end of the year with up to 120 million people using this "revolutionary" new mobile communications service. But what does it actually have the WAP doesn't already offer to European users?

i-mode is a mobile communications platform allowing users to connect to a wide spectrum of moderated sites. It also provides services such as e-mail and online shopping directly through your phone bill. Launched in Japan in 1999 it now has over 40 million subscribers, over a quarter of the country's population. The first European deployment of i-mode was in Germany in March 2002 and since then services have launched in The Netherlands, Belgium, France and Spain. This month has seen I-mode launch in Italy, the announcement of a planned launch next year in Greece and the re-launch of services in France with an accompanying publicity drive.

Despite this invasion of Europe in the last 2 years NTT DoCoMo, the company that owns i-mode, has no launches scheduled in the UK. Their partnership with Hutchinson 3G has become increasingly strained as the 3rd generation device operator drags it's heals. However there is little interest from other standard network operators who all favour their own established WAP services such as Vodafone Live. i-mode is seen as much more restrictive with the biggest issue being that standard devices cannot browse i-mode sites, only specially modified handset. When faced with the plethora of Nokia and Siemens devices that are already well-established market leaders, there's just no space for these new handsets.

i-mode does have some obvious benefits, both for users and businesses. The majority of the services are subscription based, with a monthly fee going straight on to your phone bill in exchange for access to services ranging from game downloads to newspapers. For the user they can safely browse the menus knowing that all pages have been approved by an overseeing 'council'. For parents and anyone that's fond of the web portal systems such as AOL this structuring and pre-approval testing will be a great comfort.

For service providers after the initial trauma of integrating services and gaining approval it's relatively easy to gain a regular income from users who forget to un-subscribe after introductory free periods or who get hooked on their particular gimmick. The more limited selection of available devices also makes it easier to optimise site designs and make them more visually interesting. i-mode devices have support for chtml, a language much closer to the html used to create the web than the wml used to create the often bare looking WAP sites.

However the inherent differences may put a lot of companies off. Many technologies that are successful in the Asian market disappear into obscurity in the European arena. The majority of the features of the devices are fundamentally different to what is now considered standard in the UK. Even with subscription fees of the order of just one or two pounds a month many people will be too familiar with poor WAP sites to be willing to pay for services. Developers are confronted with an extensive list of mandatory guidelines their sites must conform to. With the UK operators waiting to see how the rest of Europe reacts these are sink or swim months for i-mode.