DoCoMo and KPN have agreed to set up a mobile Internet portal in Europe.
The core value that DoCoMo brings into the partnership is the experience of how to tailor an attractive data offering to appeal to a broad subscriber base. The Japanese market is seen as one to two years ahead of Europe in terms of mobile data applications, and DoCoMo has first hand experience of what works and what doesn’t in the mobile Internet sphere.
However, part of DoCoMo’s success is attributable to the ownership ties it has with many of its content providers in Japan. It has also been able to dictate phone specifications to manufacturers. This will not be the case in Europe. The market is divided between a number of powerful operators and handset manufacturers. The venture will also have a powerful rival in Vizzavi, the multi-access portal backed by Vodafone and VivendiNet, which will have several months’ head start on KPN/DoCoMo, as well as a potential subscriber base of 59 million.
The crucial factor in KPN/DoCoMo’s success or failure will be the portal’s reliance on the iMode mobile Internet standard. Both WAP and iMode have the same data transfer speed but iMode offers one major benefit over WAP: the advantage of always being switched on. But consumers may be reluctant to commit to a new standard and invest in an iMode-enabled handset, knowing that they will only be able to access their iMode portal, excluding access to all the independent sites that are WAP-enabled. And whilst version 2.0 of WAP will be iMode compatible, that standard’s launch is over a year away.
The KPN/DoCoMo portal will succeed only if the companies can persuade consumers that it is worth abandoning WAP for iMode, rather than waiting for WAP 2.0 to launch. DoCoMo has established iMode in Japan (where WAP is only used to a limited extent), but it is by no means certain that European consumers will keen to embrace this proprietary technology.
