Here’s a stunner: NTT DoCoMo announced that it is ending all marketing of iMode in Japan and will phase out the service over the next two years. The company said it will attempt to migrate its huge iMode subscriber base to its WCDMA FOMA service and will eventually only offer inexpensive voice services on its 2G network.
DoCoMo said it will continue to develop and market the service to carriers outside of Japan, but one has to wonder what the attraction of the iMode brand will be. For carriers, one of the key advantages of iMode over other ‘Net-on-handset systems is the 40m+ user base in Japan. Without that, iMode becomes just another network service.
I think DoCoMo knows this. iMmode has never taken off internationally, with the possible exception of Bouygues’ network in France; even the most generous estimates put the subscriber base at just 3M users outside of Japan. It may well be that new DoCoMo president Masao Nakamura is dismantling yet another of former president Keiji Tachikawa’s pet projects.
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