Gustaf Rosell wrote:
> At 15:11 2001-08-21, you wrote:
> > > Quote from an article on AnywhereYouGo
> > > <http://www.anywhereyougo.com/imode/Article.po?id=416715>:
> > >
> > > NTT DoCoMo had to postpone the launch of its 3G wireless
> > > handsets in Japan and cancel the "i-mode" program in Europe
> > > because of technical difficulties.
> > >
> > > Is this a misunderstanding on the part of the writer, or has
> > > there really been a cancellation?
> >
> >I'd be careful, some statements in articles on AYG are not always
> >correct.
Indeed - they get articles from all over; few are written by AYG
staff who (I hope) know their stuff.
> >From what I heard, i-mode in Europe has not been cancelled but just
> >delayed. Of course, in the end you can postpone things "forever" if
> >you want.
>
> It's not cancelled. It's postponed, or perhaps rather on hold.
So I suppose the original plan for deployment has been cancelled, but
not the underlying plan to introduce i-mode to Europe.
> The risk is of course that the delay means that the launch will
> happen in the same market window as WAP 2.0 launches. Then it will
> be quite tricky to motivate technical differences and using them as
> either advantages or drawbacks.
WAP 2.0 (or at least WML 2.0) seems to have been heavily influenced
by DoCoMo. Their technical people are probably quite happy to wait
for its implementation!
> What is left is then the business model of the i-menu,
I thought that was generally understood to be the important part of
i-mode which would be exported.
> email rather than MMS and the guts not to care about backward WAP
> 1.x compatibility.
>
> There is of course a question whether this is enough to motivate a
> launch at that time? But as far as I know (with or without NDAs...)
> there is still the ambition to go forward.
I doubt they can do a worse job of appealing to consumers than the
various existing WAP portals have done.
(I've recently been playing with my girlfriend's WAP phone, not
having one myself, and have generally got frustrated and given up on
whatever I was trying to do. I don't think WAP sites are getting
any better - it seems that a lot of them are being made and tested
for just one browser.)
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Received on Wed Aug 22 13:22:38 2001