NTT DoCoMo - Google partnership could create a 50m user market for Android: just for starters

by Stuart Corner

Friday, 25 January 2008

Page 2 of 3 Google's backing of i-Mode will likely have significant impact in Japan and be very beneficial to both parties but, on its own, is likely to have little impact elsewhere. i-mode helped jump-start Japan's mobile growth when it was launched in February 1999, and helped DoCoMo secure its lead position in the industry. In Japan, about 48 million subscribers, 81 percent of NTT DoCoMo's user base and about one-third of the population use i-mode. Outside Japan i-mode is offered in a dozen countries but has only gained around seven million users in total. In mid 2007 both Telstra in Australia and UK cellular operator O2 announced plans to scrap their i-mode services. In 2004 market researcher, Analysys said that i-mode and Vodafone Live! were "battling globally to achieve unrivalled scale, and hence advantage in terms of available content and development expertise for their respective platforms." At that time there were 1.6 million i-mode and 4.9 million Vodafone live! customers outside Japan. Vodafone appears to have won: it now has close to 40 million users spread across 24 countries. However the battle may not yet be over, and Android could be the vehicle by which i-mode or i-mode-like services make a global comeback. If Android does take off and if the final aspect of the Google DoCoMo tie up bears fruit. The two say they will "continue to study the possibility of bringing Android based handsets to the Japanese market." If they do, these will certainly support i-mode, or perhaps some significant enhancement that exploits the new platform. Then if Android succeeds outside Japan the market would be primed to receive some future variant of i-mode running on Android. However there is a big question mark hanging over this initiative in the form of NTT DoCoMo's recently announced backing of another open handset platform, with the aim of ensuring its wide acceptance in Japan, and possibly elsewhere. In December 2007,  Access Co Ltd, a Japanese global provider of software technologies to mobile markets, signed an MoU with NTT DoCoMo, NEC, Panasonic Mobile Communications and Esteemo under which the companies would study the use of the Access Linux Platform (ALP) as the basis for developing a shared Linux platform for mobile phones and an operator pack for NTT DoCoMo. << First page <   1 2 3 Next page > Last page - Post your comment >>

 

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