Now that O2 and Telstra have let the cat out of the bag about i-mode, news is leaking out about other markets where the DoCoMo-backed mobile Internet standard has not been living up to expectations. The IHT says i-mode has 50 million users in Japan, but it has failed to reach even 8 million subscribers across its 17 franchises outside its home market.
Despite the many teething problems that KPN had in working with DoCoMo (including DoCoMo making a $4.7 billion write-off of its investment in the company in 2002), the Dutch incumbent was the first mobile operator outside Japan to launch i-mode in 2001, and it is still promoting it. But developers say i-mode has been disappointing. “I think it’s fair to say i-mode has not caught on in the Netherlands like people originally thought it would,” Richard Hazenberg, the chief executive of Mobile Excellence International, a local maker and distributor of mobile Internet games, tells the IHT. Another developer in Germany, where the service is offered over KPN’s E-Plus network, says his feeling is that “i-mode is on its way out.”
But it is not all doom and gloom just yet. A person close to KPN says he thinks the operator will probably continue to run the service alongside its other mobile Internet offerings. And Italy’s Wind has taken a different approach to the service: it offers i-mode under a flat-rate plan of
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