O2 launches mobile web service

O2 hopes to lure Irish mobile users onto the internet with its introduction tomorrow of i-mode, the web service created by operator NTT DoCoMo and phenomenally popular in its home market, Japan.

Using special i-mode handsets, users can access the i-mode network by pushing a button to view content such as news or racing information, to book hotels or cars, check property listings, play games or download music, videos and ringtones.

While some content will be free, most is provided via a subscription service with charges capped at €3 a month. In addition, users are charged one cent per kilobit of download size. These traffic charges raise the bulk of revenue for i-mode operators, according to DoCoMo.

Three i-mode handsets will be available in Ireland around the end of the month, with the first handsets in O2 stores from Friday.

"I-mode is the most widely used internet service worldwide, and we see it as a fundamentally different experience for our customers," said Danuta Gray, chief executive, O2 Ireland, yesterday.

The Irish service - the 14th market for i-mode, launching a week after Britain - will initially offer content and services from 80 official providers including Ireland.com. But Gray says she expects many unofficial sites to spring up as well, as they have in Japan, where DoCoMo offers 4,000 official sites and some 80,000 unofficial sites, also providing content and services.

I-mode has 50 million users globally, though 44.5 million of those are in Japan, where 70 per cent of the population use i-mode regularly. There, i-mode is credited with having driven Japanese take-up of the internet, which rose from a low penetration rate of only 18 per cent in 1999 - the year of i-mode's introduction - to 78 per cent in five years.

However Europeans, who make up the bulk of the remaining 5.5 million subscribers, have not embraced the service with the same fervour as the Japanese.

Some initial setbacks with slow handset delivery marred i-mode's arrival in other countries, but DoCoMo says two European operators have since notched up a million i-mode subscribers each in two years.

"We are very confident of the customer base [ in Europe]," said Isao Ohashi, managing director of DoCoMo i-mode Europe, at the preview. "I-mode has a very big market there to be penetrated."

Last year, the service brought in revenue of $10 billion (€8.36 billion) for DoCoMo, approaching 25 per cent of total revenue for the company. DoCoMo has been so successful in pushing subscribers towards higher-revenue data services through i-mode that takes in 16 per cent of the global data revenue total.