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Your advert here!!! Our Guides Technical Editors:
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What is i-mode?I-mode, the system created by Japanese cellular operator, NTT DoCoMo, is one of the success stories of the wireless world having acquired 29 million users by Q2 2002 in Japan alone, having started back in February 1999. The ‘i’ in i-mode actually stands for information but it is also a play on the Japanese word for anywhere. The big difference between WAP and i-mode is frequently overlooked: - i-mode is entirely proprietary technology whereas WAP is the result of co-operation between the major handset vendors and the software industry working together in the WAP Forum.To create pages for the i-mode system, developers have to employ a special subset of HTML known as compact HTML (cHTML). This is the direct equivalent of WML, the Wireless Markup Language used to create WAP pages. Some observers claim i-mode is simpler to implement. The chief difference is that WML forms a subset of XML - a high level language that defines how information is stored. The advantage here is that the data only has to be created once (in XML) and can then fed to both WAP servers and HTML based Web servers. With i-mode to achieve the same result you would need to create two entirely separate sets of data. We are currently moving towards the creation of a single standard that unites both i-mode and WML (known as WAP version 2.0 or sometimes WAP NG - Next Generation) through a new language - xHTML, a version of HTML defined by the 3GPP (Third Generation Partnership Project) The very latest version of i-mode employs Java created in conjunction with Sun Microsystems and know as i-appli. WAP was initially geared towards dial-up connections (Before
GPRS came along) whereas i-mode has always used
native Internet (IP) protocols, making it more like an ADSL (Asymmetric Digital
Subscriber Line) offering to WAP’s modem based alternative. One of the biggest
difference is that NTT DoCoMo is achieving substantial revenues from i-mode.
DoCoMo has instituted a system of partnering with content providers; taking a
nine per cent commission and adding the charges for sales over i-mode to the
customer’s mobile telephone bill. Furthermore, i-mode’s users are mostly
consumers and the payments made are a matter of cents rather than dollars. Outside its native
market, Japan, i-mode is already operational in Germany (through E-Plus) and the
Netherlands (through KPN Mobile). Another KPN associate company, KPN Orange in
Belgium is also due to launch. In North America, NTT's partner, AT&T
Wireless, has announced its intention to launch an i-mode based service. A great deal of
confusion surrounds the requirements for running an i-mode service. In Japan,
DoCoMo was using PDC as the air interface but there is no good reason why GSM
can't be substituted instead. However, i-mode does necessitate some form of
packet based data connection. Believe it or not, in Japan this is running at a
mere 9.6 Kbit/s - the same as standard GSM dial-up connection. The big
difference, of course, is that GPRS (General Packet Radio Service) is needed in
the GSM world in order to run i-mode. There are plenty
of i-mode compatible browsers kicking around. Indeed Microsoft's standard Mobile
Explorer product claims to handle cHTML as well as WML. There are even some free
i-mode browsers available. For example, there is the
i-Jade browser from Zentek (www.zentek.com)
plus the Microbrowser from Pixo (http://developer.pixo.com).
Additionally you could always load EZOS’ i-mode compatible browser (www.ezos.com)
onto a Pocket PC based PDA. In France,
Bouygues Telecom will be the first non-NTT affiliated mobile network operator to
introduce an i-mode service. The crucial difference being that this particular
service will be both i-mode and WAP compatible.
Currently the only i-mode handset which supports both GSM and GPRS is available
from NEC. The Magcom (www.magcom.no)
handset made in Norway
supported i-mode but lacked a GPRS capability. The next supplier with a GSM i-mode
handset will be Toshiba but Nokia does offer an i-mode handset for the Japanese
market so don't rule out the possibility that it may offer such a handset for
the European market. The hidden agenda
behind i-mode regards billing. DoCoMo takes a nine per cent commission on all i-mode
sales and bills the customer directly. The
catch is that only sites approved by DoCoMo can sell directly to i-mode users
and at present there are somewhere in the region of 1,000 of them. Which means
circa 7,500 i-mode sites are ‘unofficial’. Outside of Japan it’s difficult
to look at an i-mode site so try this instead
(http://cgi.tripod.com/hunknbabe/cgi-bin/home.pl).
It’s a site intended to allow Japanese guys and gals to upload their pictures
for viewing on i-mode phones. There’s another site that has the potential to
help - http://imodelinks.com - with loads
of i-mode links. However, at this juncture although it’s all in English, that
site too appears closed off to outsiders. A couple of hot sites for content
writers are www.imodeindia.com and www.mobilemediajapan.com
both of which boast useful technical information in English.
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