Killer app for mobile comms?
By Noriko Takezaki

The common concerns among developers of third generation (3G) mobile communications systems are whether 3G can really succeed and what will the service's killer app be? To find the answer, look no further than NTT DoCoMo's i-mode service, the world's first Internet-connected mobile phone service, launched early this year. NTT's i-mode offers some good hints of the 3G world still to come.

The I-mode service's popularity comes as a big relief to 3G developers, proving that the new technology will have no trouble attracting users. Voting with their dialing fingers, the i-mode service had grabbed nearly 600,000 users as of July, just five months from its service launch. In July, DoCoMo signed up more than 10,000 new subscribers per day and about 80,000 per week. These numbers are no less than stunning, and one additional metric of I-mode popularity is the number of websites that have been linked with DoCoMo's i-mode portal website.

There are 110 "official" DoCoMo i-mode sites (directly accessed from DoCoMo's portal site when a user pushes the i-mode phone's dedicated button), and some 900 unofficial i-mode sites (accessible by entering individual URLs). The unofficial sites were developed without DoCoMo's sanction, and -- like the proliferation of unofficial Palm Pilot sites in the US -- prove that NTT's on to a good thing. Since i-mode-compatible Web pages are based on a subset of HTML (Compact HTML), it is easy to convert existing webpages into i-mode accessible format. This has accelerated growth of the unofficial i-mode sites, and to date, five independent i-mode search engines have emerged on the Net.

Wearable and mobile
DoCoMo plans to make the cellular phone a wearable device, allowing users to employ microniches (say, the three minutes spent waiting for a commuter train at Shinjuku station) to conduct, for example, e-business transactions. As the i-mode service is based on packet data transmission, users are charged only for how much information they retrieve, not how long they are online. "Unlike in the US, where the penetration of PCs to the home market was key, in Japan, the ubiquity of the i-mode terminal will be a driving force for promoting e-business," said Kenichi Enoki, director of NTT DoCoMo's Gateway Business Dept. "The i-mode terminal is simple and easy to use."

How much content bang do I-mode users get for their digital buck? Current contents include services such as e-mail, entertainment, daily life information & tips, financial transactions, and database lookup. Of these, e-mail, entertainment, and daily life tips are the most popular, with business applications such as financial transactions and database access still remaining ill-used due to a lack of supporting infrastructure. But that should change after the introduction of new services this fall, which will allow subscribers to access their corporate intranet, and also after the successful incorporation of Java, Jini, and Java Card technologies into i-mode phones. This should happen in a few years, based on the tie-up between Sun Microsystems and NTT DoCoMo announced in March.

Consumer applications
The i-mode phone can exchange e-mail with PCs, PDAs, and other i-mode cellular phones. E-mail text is limited to 250 Japanese double-byte characters, or up to single-byte 500 ASCII characters. Users' e-mail addresses can either be the cellular phone number or a user-defined address, followed by @docomo.ne.jp. In addition, one ISP, Net Village, offers a remote mail service for i-mode users allow access to users' corporate or private e-mail accounts without limiting the message text size (see http://rmail.netvillage.co.jp/). This service was offered free as a trial as of July, but will be switched to a fee-based service in the future, according to DoCoMo.

One popular entertainment site is game maker Bandai's Itsudemo Kyarappa site, where users can download animated characters to use as, for example, the phone screen's wallpaper. Users also receive e-mail from Bandai at their i-mode phone telling them a URL from which they can download the animated character of the day, including Hello Kitty, Tare-Panda, and various Tamagotchi beasts. Currently, about 75,000 people -- some 10 percent of all i-mode users -- are registered for the service. Most are men in their 20s, but young female users are also increasing. The monthly service charge is JPY100 per character.

In addition, an area information system, called the Ekimae Tanken Club -- run by Toshiba -- is growing popular. The service, originally offered for home PC users, provides train and subway information for the Tokyo metropolitan and Kansai areas, including timetables, transfer information, and last train times. It also contains maps of the areas surrounding stations, showing restaurants and entertainment spots. This service is free.

Other popular content services include Photonet, run by Photonet Japan, a digital photo album service whereby users can upload & download photos taken with traditional or digital cameras, and Nami Densetsu, run by Cybird, providing Tokyo-area beach surfing information, such as sea, tide, and weather conditions. Photonet is free, but Nami Densetsu costs JPY300 per month.

Corporate applications
To enhance i-mode's corporate applicability, NTT DoCoMo is planning to introduce two services for corporate intranet application this fall. One is Puma Technologies' Intellisync Anywhere. Combined with groupware as Microsoft Exchange Server and Lotus Notes/Domino, Intellisync Anywhere allows i-mode users to check e-mail and scheduling data entered into their corporate groupware database. This application targets larger corporations, and sales and support work for the service will be handled by Softbank and partner companies. Compaq Computer will offer another corporate intranet application. This product, called Bizport, is also intended for groupware use, but targets SMEs (small and medium enterprises). Bizport starts at JPY888,000, depending on the number of users.

Services to come For the future, NTT DoCoMo is interested in providing highway traffic information using GPS technology, and later this year, the company plans to offer a personal location information service based on GPS. NTT originally planned to adopt technology developed by an American vendor, SnapTrack, but is reportedly looking for other vendor's technology as well, due to accuracy limitations with SnapTrack. Since the location information service market is expected to grow in tandem with deployment of the Japanese government's Intelligent Transportation System (ITS -- see Newsbriefs in the May 1998 CJ -- Ed.) scheme, this could be one area where 3G generates a large and currently untapped market.

Noriko Takezaki is senior editor at Computing Japan.

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