I-mode will be lucrative for European operators, report claims
By Husna Naujeer, Total Telecom
05 June 2001
Operators in the U.K., Germany, Netherlands, Italy and France will likely adopt i-mode in the
delayed run-up to a full 3G launch in 2003-4, according to a new report by Tarifica, a group
member of consultancy pbi Media. Adoption of i-mode in the U.S. is predicted to take longer but
will happen within the next year.
The report claims that operators keen to recoup heavy 3G licence costs are seeking alternative
3G-type services to roll out over GPRS networks.
I-mode could reverse the decline in ARPU for voice-centric services and enable an increase in
data usage through a proliferation of services designed for wideband and broadband networks.
The report, I-mode in Europe - Entertainment and Content for the European Audience,
estimates that by the end of 2002, the increase in average ARPU in the entry countries could be
as much as 3.5 euros per subscriber.
Will i-Mode succeed in Europe? Have your say at Roam Online's i-Mode forum.
It is thought that i-mode will generate new forms of content and entertainment delivery and
create completely new types of demand and market segments, particularly in the youth market.
"The underlying psychological drivers in Japan are not that different from those in Europe,"
Nicholas McNulty, associate consultant at Tarifica, told Total Telecom. "People sitting on a train
or waiting for a bus want to be entertained, regardless of where they are. But the content has to
be relevant, perhaps even individualized, for a European audience."
According to McNulty, there are no significant technological problems involved in deploying
i-mode over a European GPRS network. "The content is simply translated over the interface. In
many ways i-mode is identical to WAP, but it's just that they use different languages."
The report highlights the importance of partnering with appropriate handset manufacturers, and
the need to push the service "correctly." It also addresses the question of whether i-mode will
compete with or complement WAP as Europe migrates from GPRS to 3G.
"Will the WAP Forum choose to partner with DoCoMo and exploit a service that is a proven
success in Japan, or will it choose to develop its own data service model?" added Phillip Low,
director of consulting at pbi Media. "WAP's apparent failure resulted from a service concept of
Internet-on-the-move, over a slower and congested GSM based circuit-switched networks with
little initial content that customers found difficult to use. Conversely i-mode was marketed as a
source of entertainment and content and has been profoundly successful. We sense that a
gold-rush is on and i-mode in Europe will be a profitable transition."
Potential exists for NTT DoCoMo to gain its own share of an already very competitive market.
But Tarifica warns that operators will need to convince potential partners and investors to put
further finance into the deployment of i-mode.
McNulty believes there is a high probability that eventually i-mode and WAP will be merged to
form a new standard, "probably [based on] XML." Apparently the possibilities are endless and
the changes will come as a welcome antidote to the failure of WAP.
"It didn't take very long for people to realize that they couldn't do much with WAP; everything
takes a long time to translate into the wireless mark up language that WAP uses. In contrast,
i-mode is a proven business model, and in Europe it will act as enabler towards 3G, giving
people a taster for what 3G can achieve." |
