I-mode World Expansion Pays Off

DoCoMo’s i-mode is being offered by numerous telcos around the world — 176 million people will be covered by its service once all the operators signed up launch. This figure is just over half of Vodafone’s subscriber base. I found the following point interesting: “Alongside four mega-operators, the groupings of Vodafone, i-mode, Freemove, Starmap and Asia Mobility Initiative now comprise over 80% of the world’s mobile subscribers”. This is pretty signficant, and explains why content providers are willing to go to such lengths to get onto one of these services. Of course, these services are all different, one from another. I-mode has an inclusive model while Vodafone is pay-per-download and the Asia Mobility Initiative is more of a roaming agreement between carriers – at least that’s how it started.

What I’d really like to see is a comparison of content sales. Is it better for a content producer to put their product on Vodafone Live, where it may be hidden behind other content, on a portal targeted at a particular group or content type, or on their own branded portal? Where does the content get bought from? Anecdotally I’d expect the majority of content to be sold from operator’s portals, and also for this percentage to be getting smaller. I also think most sales are represented by a few products — so-called ‘blockbusters’. It would be also interesting to see what percentage of mobile content sales are repackaged from other channels and what percentage are made specifically for the device.

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