The adoption of I-mode by European carriers would be a major loss for
Ericsson and other providers of GSM technology like Nokia, Siemens, and
Motorola. They are not major suppliers of the I-mode phones or packet system
so this would provide docomo's four phone manufacturers (who receive
preferential information from docomo) with a chance to expand their presence
in Europe. (For those who don't believe that docomo provides its phone
manufacturers with preferential information see my paper
http://www.appelsiini.net/keitai-l/papers/jeffrey/ on how docomo came to
dominate PDC in japan in the mid-90s).
A related question is what ericsson is doing with matsushita. The japanese
press is making this recently announced alliance sound very important while
the western press hardly mentions it. Is Ericsson concerned about its loss
of share in the GSM handset market and thus is looking for major help from
matsushita (as the japanese press makes it sound)? Or is it a temporary
alliance of the type that ericsson used well in the early years of GSM to
enter a large number countries?
Jeffrey L. Funk
Associate Professor
Kobe University
Graduate School of Business
2-1 Rokkodai, Nada, Kobe 657 Japan
telephone and fax: 81-78-803-6913
home phone: 81-798-74-2440
e-mail: funk@rose.rokkodai.kobe-u.ac.jp
mobile phone: 090-4906-3113
-----Original Message-----
From: Mika Tuupola [SMTP:tuupola@appelsiini.net]
Sent: Wednesday, October 18, 2000 4:37 AM
To: keitai-l@appelsiini.net
Subject: (keitai-l) Justin Chamberlain on i-mode
Below is a quote by Ericsson's head of corporate ventures, Justin
Chamberlain. Taken from cre@teonline issue 2, august 2000.
"i-mode is a walled garden and not truly mobile Internet, which
restricts the development of creative new services. WAP has been
optimized as a standard for mobile internet by the independent
WAP forum."
This quote somehow makes me smile. The existing i-mode services
are usually far more creative than any WAP service I have yet
seen. Also I don't feel that WAP is an open standard. It is
a standard developed by a closed forum (of well if you pay
you can join). Even though i-mode uses NTT DoCoMos proprietary
network technology, the rest of it uses IMO far more open
standards than WAP.
Or does anyone agree with me? :)
--
Mika Tuupola http://www.appelsiini.net/~tuupola/
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Received on Wed Oct 18 04:06:39 2000