DoCoMo To Begin Offering i-mode In Europe 48
Mike Bouma writes: "Since the launch of the i-mode service in February 1999, i-mode has gained more than 17 million subscribers in Japan. I-mode will soon be released onto the Belgian, German, Italian and Dutch markets as well. NTT DoCoMo will also release an upgraded i-mode sevice called "i appli" for the Japanese market on the 26th of Januari. This year in May DoComo also plans to be the first company to offer G3 mobile phone technology."
no one knows how important it is (Score:1)
GPRS roll-out (Score:2)
gprs (Score:1)
Re:Necessary Good thing? (Score:1)
It is interesting that apparently the expectation of the US market is that 300Kbps is "enough" for most consumers, which is to be offered by EDGE, which I believe is a GPRS like upgrade of current CDMA infrastructure. This EDGE technology in the US is what is reffered to as 3G, but is really 2.5G!
To sum up the above rambling, America is still destined to lag behind the rest of the world in mobile telecoms for the forseeable (sp?) future.
Hehehehehe ;)
Re:He has signed over 50 death penalties (Score:1)
Overkill? (Score:1)
Don't you think G3 is a little overkill for a phone? And what is motorola doing supplying philips with chips for their phones?
He meant 3G.
Re:should be a hit, I think (Score:1)
poor Apple, G3's in telephones now (Score:1)
:)
Re:how long will the US continue to lag behind her (Score:1)
"The US invents loads of stuff. That means we get version 1.0 of loads of stuff. Everyone else gets version 2.0 and we're stuck with an old infrastructure" or words to that effect.
WAP, or WAP1 as I've seen it referred to here, could well be an example of the same problem, happening in Europe. i-mode will have to compete with an existing established infrastructure as well as the up-coming WAP2.
IMHO WAP's biggest problem is it's per-minute charges. I can spend 3 minutes using WAP to find the weather in NYC, or I can call a friend in NYC, get the answer in 10 seconds, and spend the rest of my phone bill on catching up with a mate! (Yes international calls from a UK mobile are really cheap sometimes
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Re:i-appli = Java on a phone (Score:1)
Re:Necessary Good thing? (Score:1)
Voice Quality vs. Coverage (Score:1)
However, what is a phone primarily used for? Reading contents? No. Talking with others. For that, the PHS phones are so much better than i-mode.
And they work fine as long as you stay real close to a relay; if you leave the city, tough luck. Not to mention that people can pinpoint your location much more accurately with PHS's. Thanks, but I'll be sticking with my 800MHz digital phone.
And incidentally, I've never quite seen the need for CD-quality audio in a telephone conversation...
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BACKNEXTFINISHCANCEL
Re:US has real, high-speed mobile wireless IP now! (Score:1)
i have ATT (former cellular one) in the bay area, and it's really ridiculous for the most part. quality is horrendous, service is spotty, customer service is lame. and the batteries are drained in 2 days.
used to have a mobile in europe. that one worked just like a regular phone, perfect sound quality, had SMS etc. it does not sound like much, but it makes a huge difference in usability.
my US phone is more like an emergency thing, i use it when no other phones are available. the one in europe was one i used exclusively, even when a landline was available. it was just so convenient...
Re:Necessary Good thing? (Score:1)
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Re:so? (Score:1)
Re:what people fail to realize... (Score:1)
WAP/WML - comments on each link you posted. (Score:4)
Another part I found rather humorous was this paragraph:
One reason why people feel WAP phones are a big let down is that they expect their Internet experience on the WAP phone to be similar (if not better) to that on a PC. This expectation on the part of the users is really not surprising largely because the hype surrounding WAP is so high that it is made out to be something that it?s really not. And, with this kind of unrealistic expectations, the service was bound to fall short.
Only in the computer industry do we have the hubris to assume that because users do not like and cannot understand the service, the solution is to upgrade the users! I think almost by definition, what a customer wants from wireless is realistic. If you can't give it to them (or figure out soemthing they will find useful instead of being told it's useful), then you are not done working yet!
In the second article (Canvas Dreams), I take exception with saying that WAP has "100% industry acceptance". Personally, since DoCoMo is going to start offering service in Europe I think you should consider the "industry" anyone that will be providing service. That means DoCoMo is part of the industry, and thus WAP does not have "100% industry acceptance".
The other facet of that is that while WAP might have a "high" industry acceptance, how high is the customer acceptance? There are plenty of examples where "industries" decided what is best for the customers and the customers all went and did something else, or just ignored the industries altogether.
They also mention the point about land lines being very expensive in Japan - true, but isn't wireless access REALLY popular in Europe, and isn't bandwidth really expesnive there still? Perhaps similar but somewhat different market forces will spread iMode just as wide there as in Japan.
The last article (which is better?) paints a bleaker picture for iMode. But I don't see things that way. Look at the need to create special sites, and the lock in to browsing at sites offered by your service provider, vs. iModes ability to go to any site. Also of course WAP is circuit switched, and iMode is packet based. it seems to me that iMode is going to be able to support more customers using the same bandwith than WAP.
A few last telling points. Go to UseIt [useit.com] and read some of the artciles about usability tests of WAP devices in London. The conclusion he comes to (and one I agree with) is that screen size matters for internet browsing, and that a keypad is not enough of an interface to work with the web. Consider that it took users about 1 - 2 minutes to look up a weather report. One user reported that they could have bought a paper and spent less money to get the information faster!
I like WAP/WML being an industry standard. It's just a shame the industry made such horrible choices. Hopefully for their own sakes the "industry" is flexible enough to switch to a packet based network that works with HTML to some degree.
Re: (Score:1)
GPRS available in UK (Score:1)
Re:WAP/WML - comments on each link you posted. (Score:1)
WAP is not circuit switched at all. But GSM data is circuit switched, and WAP (in Europe) uses GSM to send/receive the data. However this should change very soon when GPRS (a GSM packed-mode "extension").
But inherently you are right. It was just stupid to try to sell WAP without GPRS.
Cheers,
Angel
TIM & KPN Mobile? In Belgium? (Score:1)
Re:Isn't it 3G? (Score:1)
Re:Necessary Good thing? (Score:1)
Re:Necessary Good thing? (Score:1)
G3? (Score:1)
Re:first (Score:1)
More info for the undoctrined !! (Score:3)
Here is a link [ciol.com] describing on how i-node works. This stuff can get quite cool if you really have access to this technology. (Where are the towers, buddy?). I guess that finally, Europe will finally start reaping from this new technology.
But wait a sec, where is the bill for that UMTS phone I have prepaid!?!
Why? (Score:1)
how long will the US continue to lag behind here? (Score:2)
DoCoMo (Score:1)
There's a phone called DoCoMo
We want to have i-mode
When we use our phone....
Links (Score:1)
As it turns out EDGE is more like UMTS in current frequency bands. I was talking crap, but it is till unlikely to offer 2Mbps (its in the spec, but likely not to be implemented).
Success of compact/mobile computing in Japan (Score:2)
Re:Fucking Japs... (Score:1)
US has real, high-speed mobile wireless IP now! (Score:3)
Service is good, the external modem includes both serial and USB interfaces, and both work beautifully under linux. The modem is a "standard" USB modem and works with the ACM driver; the connection is simply a high-speed PPP connection. It's amazing how liberating the service is, if you have a laptop. It works just about anywhere in the cities with coverage, it's flat-rate, and there are no "roaming fees" letting me travel back East and get online just as I would at home.
I prepaid $825 for a year of service, which works out to $68.75/month - acceptable for my primary connection. It's a bit like wireless ISDN - fast enough for streaming audio or kernel source downloads, but not DSL or cable speeds. At times I've seen >220 kbits/sec, but 80-140 is typical. Latency is too high for shooters (typically 200-600 msec - the problem is the latency fluctuates), but I can listen to a 64kbit shoutcast/icecast MP3 stream while playing gtetrinet without a hitch.
It's not telephone service, and isn't meant to be, which is why it works so well. Who needs G3?
Just one data point in the US,
-Isaac
Re:...and will never catch on in US (Score:1)
in europe, mobile companies are fighting no-holds-barred over every single customer. they have huge ad campaigns, excellent starting offers, really good voice quality etc. of course it's also helping things that landlines there cost as much as more than cell phones and the cell phones have more features (caller ID, SMS, call log, etc) and similar voice quality.
none of these is true for the US. land lines here are cheaper, voice quality on cell phones is horrible for the most part, and features either cost extra or are not available at all (SMS). so mobile phones are a lot less appealing, technologically about 5 years behind, and more expensive in the US.
compared to these factors, iMode or not iMode is next to irrelevant. if you have a phone, you want to use it as a phone first and foremost. in the US, the voice phone experience is just not compelling enough.
there is also a certain critical mass effect (that already affects teenagers here), in that a cell phone is a lot more useful if lots of people you know have one, too.
nik
NTT is evil (Score:1)
...and will never catch on in US (Score:1)
The technology represents the Internet for Japan, where PC access is less common, but Americans have been spoiled with broadband access at work, let alone PC dialups. I don't think the feature set is going to wow anybody here. With eventual buildouts for 3G, maybe the US can have six different wireless networks operating at once! I can understand why CDMA and TDMA and AMPS are the situation now, but that doesn't explain why we would need to repeat similar confusion in the future.
Re:Only where NTT have access (Score:1)
Well, that's not true. I know that Switzerland has the service already running, and I'm pretty sure, that other countries do as well. Here in Germany at least two carriers are going to start the common, widespread use of GPRS within the next two weeks (Viag: 24.1. and T-Mobil: 1.2.).
Secret UK flying saucers (Score:1)
Content vs. Voice Quality (Score:1)
However, what is a phone primarily used for? Reading contents? No. Talking with others. For that, the PHS phones are so much better than i-mode. Yet, most people seem to tolerate the poor voice quality for the contents (and more often then not, IMHO, the name brand) of i-mode.
Like complaining to LookOut! users about their moronic [fourmilab.ch] HTML mail, I often ask i-mode users to find a public phone to talk with me.
But it does look as though contents are what most people find most important. At the train station or on the streets walking, I see hundreds of people every day focused on their little phone screens.
Re:WAP/WML - comments on each link you posted. (Score:1)
Hi,
I'm the author of that bit, and I still stand by what I said. "WAP has 100% industry acceptance", I did not say that that meant that no-one was going to try expand/extend/compete etc with it, just that the people who matter (The handset manufacturers, network operators etc) are 100% behind WAP, and with the amount of money already spend on getting the WAP infastructure coupled with the ENORMOUS expenditure on 3G spectrum licences means there is little left for a dual technology play.
A side point;
Most people think that i-Mode is faster than WAP - suffucit to say that this is not true. WAP has no concept of speed, in the same way as HTTP has no concept of speed. WAP was deliberately designed to be air-interface bearer-indepandant. It'll work over GSM CSD, GSM HSCSD, GSM Cell Broadcast, CDMA, TDMA, GPRS, GPRS+EDGE, 3G etc etc. NTT DoCoMo launched i-Mode on a packet-based network which is faster than the GSM CSD available in European countries who deployed WAP. WAP is faster than i-Mode on comparable networks becase of the compression used on the WAP Gateway and the lack of "Slow start".
What effect? (Score:2)
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should be a hit, I think (Score:1)
Isn't it 3G? (Score:1)
G3 -> A processor produced by Motorola and used extensively by Apple.
3G -> A third generation (hence the 3G) mobile processor designed for used in cell phones and the like.
Just a little additional accuracy.
-Jason
Necessary Good thing? (Score:4)
On the other hand, it could be construed as a "Good Thing" because it would encourage competition and give a kickstart to the latent WAP market by demonstrating the more powerful i-mode applications, forcing vendors to adopt to the full WAP specification (as most only do text right now, when WAP fully supports grayscale imaging in spec).
A couple URLs for a comparison between WAP and i-mode are:
Enjoy the reading.
Only where NTT have access (Score:4)
iMode is going to be horibly expensive to use in an always on mode - much like WAP is now. Admittedly the better markup language will help but without technical details of how the service will be offered I can only see this failing in the same way the WAP has - after all if it's running on a switched circuit then it's just WAP with slightly different protocols and language.
Nice slashdot (Score:1)
Its Funny how this wasn't newsworthy when *I* submitted the news.com article a week ago....oh well..
Makes me want to move to tokyo in may. I can't wait for 3g wireless.
i-appli = Java on a phone (Score:2)