This looks interesting for those of us who live outside Japan!
I-mode research moves into Europe
European mobile Internet venture agreed
By Dan Roberts, Telecoms Correspondent, in London - Jan 17 2001 19:35:22
Telecom Italia Mobile, NTT DoCoMo of Japan and KPN of the Netherlands have
struck a three-way agreement to develop mobile phone Internet services
across Europe.
Their joint venture, which is expected to be announced on Thursday is
intended to exploit the success of DoCoMo's i-mode service and challenge
larger pan-European operators such as Vodafone.
Each of the three backers will invest an initial sum of about $30m to build
two development centres in Italy and the Netherlands where 80 research staff
will develop applications based on i-mode.
The deal itself is a relatively small move compared with existing research
investment, but it is likely to be perceived as the first step towards a new
power grouping among the rapidly consolidating European operators.
Vodafone, France Telecom, Deutsche Telekom and British Telecommunications
are already establishing themselves as pan-European players with integrated
research and development activities.
The battle to become Europe's fifth dominant operator has been split between
smaller groupings such as DoCoMo and KPN; Spain's Telefonica and Sonera of
Finland, and Telecom Italia Mobile (TIM). The surprise decision to align the
interests of KPN, DoCoMo and TIM comes despite approaches from Sonera, which
is looking for a partner of its own.
However, the joint venture's emphasis on exploiting i-mode in Europe is
likely to raise eyebrows among observers who remember a similar deal last
year involving KPN, DoCoMo and Hutchison Whampoa of Hong Kong.
Hutchison is not believed to part of the latest joint venture, increasing
fears that the Hong Kong conglomerate is losing interest in its other
European partners.
TIM has already had technical and marketing agreement with DoCoMo for the
last three and half years, but has only be exchanging engineers and there
was no equity involved.
The partners have agreed to carve up European markets between them, allowing
KPN to exploit the developments from the joint venture in Holland, Belgium,
Germany and probably the UK, while TIM concentrates on Spain, France ,Italy,
Austria and Turkey.
The developers do not believe they need to wait for third generation
networks to bring i-mode type services to Europe and hope to lobby
manufacturers to develop dual-browser handsets which can handle HTML
internet programming language in the same way as Japanese handsets.
They have also agreed that the new centres of excellence will have exclusive
supply agreements with the founding shareholders for three years, after
which the joint venture will be free to sell services to rival operators.
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Received on Mon Jan 22 09:40:57 2001