E-Plus kills i-mode service
German mobile operator bangs in penultimate nail
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E-Plus, the KPN-owned mobile operator from Dusseldorf, is ending its i-mode service from April 1. Subscribers will be offered a Surf & Mail Flatrate service instead.
E-Plus adopted i-mode in 2002, but as in many other European counties the Japanese-inspired service never took off. E-Plus never revealed the number of i-mode subscribers.
i-mode was launched in Japan in February 1999 and became extremely successful. The i-mode phone was once the main driver behind DoCoMo's market share. At one point, i-mode once had 60 million customers in Japan and over five million in the rest of the world. DoCoMo licensed i-mode to operators in Spain, Italy, France and Greece and through KPN in Germany and the Benelux.
But in all these countries i-mode has struggled to make the service a mass-market success. Initially it offered a promising alternative to the unexciting WAP-based platforms, but was quickly outmoded when flatfee 3G services offered unlimited mobile access to the internet.
Last year O2 hit the red button on its i-mode service less than two years after it brought the Japanese mobile web technology to Europe. The company spent £10m to pull in just 250,000 users.
In July 2007 KPN announced that it will no longer be launching new i-mode services or mobile phones, citing low subscriber numbers.
Russian Mobile TeleSystems dropped i-mode last month. The last country to offer i-mode in Europe is Romania. Leading Philippine wireless carrier Smart Communications is set to roll out i-mode services to its postpaid customers in March. ®
COMMENTS
France too
And Bouygues has it too, albeit at the bottom of their offers page.
http://www.internetmobile.bouyguestelecom.fr/offres.php
http://www.internetmobile.bouyguestelecom.fr/offres_illi.php
Re: mobile web browsing
Mobile browsing is fine, it's when the operator tries to keep users within a walled garden that it goes pear shaped.
I used O2 i-mode; all the 'services' were crap. Fortunately the phone's browser was capable of basic rendering of the rest of the web.
Ironically, I switched to an iPhone contract, and O2 kept charging me for i-mode services for several months afterwards. The only way to unsubscribe from services was through i-mode itself; something I obviously couldn't do. I've managed to convince O2 to stop charging me now, but no luck in getting my money back.
Italy has imode
Actually Wind in Italy is still running i-mode
http://www.wind.it/imode/it/index.phtml
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