The Bad News Continues To Mount For I-Mode
Now that O2 and Telstra have let the cat out of the bag about i-mode, news is leaking out about other markets where the DoCoMo-backed mobile Internet standard has not been living up to expectations. The IHT says i-mode has 50 million users in Japan, but it has failed to reach even 8 million subscribers across its 17 franchises outside its home market.
Despite the many teething problems that KPN had in working with DoCoMo (including DoCoMo making a $4.7 billion write-off of its investment in the company in 2002), the Dutch incumbent was the first mobile operator outside Japan to launch i-mode in 2001, and it is still promoting it. But developers say i-mode has been disappointing. “I think it’s fair to say i-mode has not caught on in the Netherlands like people originally thought it would,” Richard Hazenberg, the chief executive of Mobile Excellence International, a local maker and distributor of mobile Internet games, tells the IHT. Another developer in Germany, where the service is offered over KPN’s E-Plus network, says his feeling is that “i-mode is on its way out.”
But it is not all doom and gloom just yet. A person close to KPN says he thinks the operator will probably continue to run the service alongside its other mobile Internet offerings. And Italy’s Wind has taken a different approach to the service: it offers i-mode under a flat-rate plan of
I would not say that iMode required a lot of extra work to create content sites – on the contrary. cHTML was much easier to implement in the times and age of WAP 1.1 and 1.2 and even allowed you more flexibility in the graphic design. The DoCoMo guidelines (if you were an official CP) even helped creating a coherent design for different sites. The end user knew the workflow more or less.
I would disagree as well that iMode was a walled garden. Most content sites were off portal and everyone can/could create an iMode site.
iMode even had push email when no one else (not even Blackberry!) had it.
iMode's problem reside(d) more in the fact that the handsets were from unknown/unattractive manufactorers. Not even Tier 2 manufactorer but 3 or even 4. When that latest rage was a new Nokia or a new Samsung on iMode it was the latest NEC or Mitsubishi. How cool is that ?
The other factor that did not help iMode is that for the old handsets content pages are limited to 10kB and for the newer generation its 20kB. Makes fast loading but impossible to add newer graphical features.
Data pricing was certainly an issue too, although it failed to take up in our home market, where the local cell-co (a KPN division) offered a sort of flat rate (7 euro for 20-30 MB which is a lot on iMode) for the access to it.
Lastly DoJa as opposed to MIDP applications were needed on most handsets – this did not facilitate the task of game developers outside Japan.
What iMode need(ed) as (more) handsets by Nokia, Samsung and SonyEricsson, MIDP applications and all the other stuff that works on 'normal' handsets.
iMode is for sure a walled garden.
The fact that iMode have set clear and strict limitations (such as 10k page size) mean that all sites not adhering to the iMode standard are out in the cold.
By setting such limitations iMode restrict the available content based on own assumptions of what users want, and the lacking success clearly shows that neither content providers or handset manufacturers, and more importantly the end users does not embrase such initiatives.
Alatto's solution Tribes however is a true OFF-Portal solution that does not set any such limitations. The idea behind Tribes is to "Give People What They Want".
Tribes as a proxy record all sites found by link clicking and rate these + all sites already in the TRIBES portal based on a number of factors.
The result is that Alatto provide the users with a dynamic personalised portal limited only by the users own behavior and preferences, and not by technical limits and assumptions from a portal owner.