LONDON, March 26 (Reuters) - Vodafone will give its mobile Web portal a flashy upgrade to counter the anticipated threat from the European launch of i-mode, Japan's runaway success mobile Internet service, sources said on Tuesday.
Vodafone will soon unveil plans for a faster, more visual version of its Vizzavi Web portal and is lining up new content partners, some of which also plan to provide news and entertainment for i-mode, which KPN Telecom and NTT DoCoMo are rolling out in Germany and the Netherlands.
"Vodafone wants to stop its customers jumping ship from WAP to the much more attractive i-mode which is exclusively offered by KPN Mobile," one source close to the company said.
Vodafone could launch the new Vizzavi service built on a technology that resembles i-mode's, which netted NTT DoCoMo 30 million subscribers in Japan. Unlike today's text-based mobile Internet in Europe, which is built with Wireless Application Protocol (WAP), the upgraded service will more closely resemble popular Web sites, sources said.
WAP has largely been a disappointment. It has generated hardly any data revenues for operators compared with popular text messages. It offers monochrome sites and it is slow.
Vodafone confirmed it is working to overhaul its Vizzavi portal, which it owns jointly with France's media group Vivendi . But Vodafone, the world's second largest mobile operator after China Mobile , declined to give further details.
"We will be launching in each of our territories a different user interface. It's more likely to happen this year (than next year)," a Vodafone spokesman said.
The first announcements are expected around i-mode's launch in the Netherlands on April 4.
KPN Mobile was not immediately available for comment. NTT DoCoMo in Japan said it had not licenced its service to Vodafone, but said it was possible for rivals to copy a "flavour" of i-mode.
I-mode, which is a proprietary service from Japan's dominant mobile operator NTT DoCoMo, was introduced at KPN Telecom's German wireless unit E-Plus earlier this month. NTT DoCoMo owns 15 percent of KPN Mobile, the wireless unit of KPN Telecom.
I-MODE LAUNCHES WITH PORN
In Germany and the Benelux countries KPN has a potential market for i-mode of some 100 million consumers. At the moment E-Plus is one of the smaller operators in Germany. Vodafone is a top player in Europe, including Germany and Holland.
Subscribers to the i-mode service will have to buy a new handset from either NEC or Toshiba , both from Japan. The phones sport large colour displays and an i-mode button which gives instant access to the service which is "always on". WAP phones connect in tens of seconds.
I-mode in Germany has started with some 60 content partners, offering news, weather forecasts, porn, games, music, downloadable ring tones, screensavers, maps and transport schedules. Similar content will be on offer in the Netherlands.
In Japan, three years after the launch, i-mode has hundreds of services on its "official" site and many more are offered "in the wild" as unofficial sites.
I-mode is built with a flavour of the same Internet mark-up language used on the Internet: HTML.
Vodafone will probably start building its service on another version of HTML. The mark-up language itself is "open source", which means anyone can freely use it to build Web sites.
Although Vodafone will never brand its service as i-mode, industry pundits expect its service will look very similar. It is not yet clear if Vodafone will need specific handsets for this service.
Probably by next year, with a new generation of cellphones that have standard HTML browsers, there is no longer a need for specific i-mode phones. All of the next-generation phones should be able to display i-mode content, as well as any other HTML content.
Received on Tue Mar 26 21:42:47 2002