Bruno Giussani, in his excellent new book Roam: Making Sense of the Wireless Internet explains that part of i-mode's success has been that it has never been promoted as a means of accessing the Internet.
"I-mode was sold as just i-mode," one of its creators, Takeshi Natsuno tells Giussani in the book. Unlike over here with WAP, the Net was barely mentioned in promotions. DoCoMo instead focused on what users could do with the service: read horoscopes, send messages, watch cartoons and check their bank balances.
Giussani says i-mode and WAP could even converge over packet-switched networks as DoCoMo develops the service internationally. But it may struggle to have the same success as it lacks the unique position of control it has enjoyed over content providers and mobile phone makers in the Japanese market.
Giussani, a former New York Times columnist and European Editor of the Industry Standard magazine has written a remarkably even-handed account of the pitfalls and potential of the mobile universe.
It is a hype-free guide to how the industry has got to where it is. The author eschews polemic and predictions, to provide an entertaining yet encyclopaedic account of its development, which is rich in references and anecdotes, as well as in its interviews with the major industry figures.
Giussani says the book is a report on the first few days of life of a new era of unhindered connectedness. But his examples show how globalised this has already become.
Off the coast of Kerala in India, fishermen at sea use mobile phones to call around the ports to find out where to land the catch to secure the best price.
In the U.S., Arizona-based Larson Camouflage has a successful business disguising antennae towers as pine trees, palm trees, cacti or giant rocks.
Revlon is introducing wireless shelves in stores that tell the manufacturer stock needs replacing the minute a customer picks up a bottle of nail varnish.
While wireless can change the way industry works, it will have a dramatic impact on ordinary people's lives, with phones becoming "an intimate utility that allows people to create their own world and control it, a sort of remote control for life," according to Orange founder Hans Snook.
Giussani sees everyone eventually becoming a part of the Internet, a node of the network - a far cry from the users of today struggling to find WAP on their phones and make a connection.
(Copyright FT Marketwatch 2001)
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