When DoCoMo first launched I-Mode, they wanted to get a fair number of
content providers on board; ease of development was therefore an
important message for them at this stage.
But even if you accept that CHTML is way cheaper and easier to get into
than WML (and I don't, though that doesn't mean I believe WML to
necessarily be superior), DoCoMo's approach combined ease of
involvement with strict standards for official content providers to
adhere to.
Without the latter, I think you'd be seeing a lot of poor repurposing
of web content by companies who believed that mobile services are just
web sites on a smaller screen. As it is, don't DoCoMo get the best of
both worlds: a clear friendly message to developers leading to
high-quality services?
I'd agree with Ken that I-mode has a number of facets; I don't think
you can pin the success of the service on any single one of them.
On 29 Mar 2004, at 05:18, Curt Sampson wrote:
> Docomo has come right out and said that making it easy for developers
> to get into doing i-mode pages was a high priority. Having done both
> CHTML and WML development, I can tell you that it's way, way cheaper
> and
> easer to get into CHTML, both for new pages and for porting existing
> sites. Going for a technologically inferior solution that gives you
> more
> content is not an unreasonable business business decision at all. And
> I'm not even convinced that WML is superior anyway.
--
Future Platforms Ltd
www.futureplatforms.com
e: tom@futureplatforms.com
t: +44 (0) 870 0055924
m: +44 (0) 7971 781422
Received on Mon Mar 29 16:13:16 2004