March 16, 2000. Copyright 2000. Graphic News. All rights reserved.

WORLDÕS HOTTEST CELL PHONE SERVICE

LONDON, March 16, Graphic News: IMAGINE a mobile phone which you wear as a fashion accessory, that can be permanently connected to the web, that can download e-mail, games, news, music and on-line banking Ð and costs customers just $2.80 (£1.75) a month.

Well, almost five million Japanese teenagers are currently enjoying just that Ð the i-mode from JapanÕs NTT DoCoMo mobile operator.

Launched just over a year ago the little Òhoney platinumÓ and Òlime goldÓ i-mode handsets are gaining new customers at a rate of 25,000 a day and have rocketed DoCoMo to the global number one cell-phone spot, with market capitalization of $370 billion (£230 billion), ahead of Vodafone AirTouch Mannesmann.

Unlike Europe and America which spent years developing the wireless application protocol (WAP), DoCoMo uses an advanced packet switching network which allows almost unlimited simultaneous access to a web site. Although transmission speeds of 9.6 kilobits per second (9.6kbps) are slow by todayÕs standards Ð sufficient to download two small pictures per second Ð i-mode is gearing up for the Òthird generationÓ (3G) high-speed wireless service and wideband ÒCode Division Multiple AccessÓ (W-CDMA).

Originally developed by the U.S. military, W-CDMA gives bandwidth on demand, with speeds ranging from 64kbps to 384kbps depending on what you want to do Ð send an e-mail or view live video. By 2003, DoCoMo plans to boost speeds to 2 megabits per second.
The information received using WAP technology comes to the phone from specially designed, but still scarce, text-only WAP websites that strip out the internet graphics and gimmicks to keep things simple.
A WAP subscriber gets only the services bundled together by the mobile operator. Because a new dial-up connection has to be made for each page it is slower than the internet we know and love, or hate, on our PCs.

DoCoMo wanted something more adventurous. ÒWeÕll become a large portal service company and plan to develop various e-commerce businesses,Ó DoCoMo managing director Kei-ichi Enoki said. 

I-mode users are continually linked to the Internet, enabling them to exchange e-mail, swap pictures, call up restaurant guides and navigate among 6,000 specially formatted Web sites without having to dial-up each time. More sites are being added at a rate of 20 a day.

Mr. Enoki gives the example of the Hello Kitty website where toymaker Bandai, the firm that gave the world Tamagotchi pets, provides the childlike antics of AsiaÕs most popular cartoon character, the cute, pink, pointy-eared, round-eyed Kitty Chan.
The Bandai i-mode cartoon site that includes Kitty generates nearly $11 million (£6.9m) in annual revenues from its 950,000 members, who pay about $1 (60p) a month.

Every day a total of 12 million e-mail messages are exchanged via i-mode, subscribers use the internet an average 10 times a day, and more than 80 percent pay for some sort of content.

Bandai general manager Toshiki Hayashi said i-mode is getting smarter.
DoCoMo plans to incorporate Sun Microsystems IncÕs Java programming into i-mode handsets coming out this autumn. That will enable animated figures to move more smoothly or will allow automatic updating daily of news, stock prices and other information once it has been downloaded.

ÒWeÕll be able to do many things,Ó Mr. Hayashi said, Òlike having Kitty Chan moving back and forth across the display, fetching the latest news for you every day.Ó
/ENDS
Sources: DoCoMo, Business Week, Reuters, Associated Press