i-mode Business Strategy: What will change to make i-mode an international success?

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Back in 2004, at the European ETRE event, Keiji Tachikawa - the just retired President of DoCoMo - remained bullish on i-mode's international ambitions.
At ATRE 2006 in Beijing this week Alex Vieux, the chairman of the event, asked Access Co CTO Kamada-san "what would change by 2008 to make i-mode a success?", meaning that following the same plan as at present would continue to not be successful.
This is a tricky question for Kamada-san, since DoCoMo is their major customer, their first large customer, the reason for their success, and an investor in Access Co.
Kamada-san's answer was that in Japan DoCoMo controlled the handset makers and relationships and was able to deploy a business model with expensive handsets, full capability, and offer subsidies. Outside Japan DoCoMo had no contol over the alliance partners relaitonships and business model in these respects and this hindered i-mode's potential success in those markets.
It's true that handset limitations and limited releases of handsets have restricted i-mode's success in many markets e.g. Holland, Australia.
Later in the day, at ATRE, when Yoshito Hori, Chairman & CEO of Globis Capital Partners, was asked if i-mode had been a success outside of Japan his answer was simpler - "No".
Hori-san said that in his opinion it was because telecoms infrastructure was too difficult to successfully export because of different regulatory and other local market conditions and proved beyond DoCoMo.
I think that the reasons for i-mode's international stagnation are more complicated and diverse, and perhaps worthy of a full report in the near future.
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