Jeff, I found your thoughts very interesting. I'm primarily lurking in this list to try and judge the likely effect of i-mode on the European scene, when it launches late this year. (secondarily, I'm here because of a growing fascination with all things Japanese...)
As the walled garden model probably won't be so easy to implement in Europe, the service model here might turn out like your speculation.... but my crystal ball isn't much good!
An afterthought: although most i-mode users don't need to go outside the walled garden, it is possible, isn't it? Whereas when one network set up their WAP site here in the UK, they didn't provide any means of entering a URL. Which meant that if your phone didn't have that function built in, the garden was roofed over as well as walled... no way out!
Greg Jotham
-----Original Message-----
From: Funk Jeffry Lee [mailto:funk@rose.rokkodai.kobe-u.ac.jp]
Sent: 09 May 2001 03:09
To: keitai-l@appelsiini.net
Subject: (keitai-l) Re: difficulties of becoming an official i-mode site
Hello Juergen and others,
I agree with most of what Juergen has said. I also think Juergen and
others like him deserve a lot of credit for creating successful mobile
internet business in japan (of which I have not done). I also would like to
apologize for posting an incorrect example (virgin airlines) - of
nevertheless what I believe to be a correct phenomena. This is where I
differ with Juergen's opinion. It is the very success of Docomo's i-mode
system that has caused us to look at it very closely at i-mode. while
docomo did not claim that "i-mode is the internet in your pocket," i-mode
willl become that and I take my hat off to docomo for this.
[ excessive quoting removed ]
[ Did you check the archives? http://www.appelsiini.net/keitai-l/ ]
Received on Wed May 9 17:13:31 2001