WAP/Mobile Internet: UK i-mode Shows Signs of Success

location based services

Launched in October 2005, O2 i-mode subscribers have reached 250,000 up from 100k in February. With over 75% of users active in any 30 day period , i-mode users consume twice as much data per month as they currently do on comparable WAP services. O2 has also announced new i-mode phones from Motorola and a Sony Ericsson 3G i-mode phone.
"The UK is the fastest growing i-mode market outside Japan" said Grahame Riddell, O2's Head of Content. Marketing; "Customers are not being sold a handset on i-mode but are using the services."
"O2's i-mode serves over 1 million page impressions per day on the 150 sites we have, across 13 genres with new companies joining the service including eBay, ITN News, rightmove.co.uk" he said. Although he wouldn't be drawn on how much, Riddell said that eBay was generating significant traffic and was in the top five i-mode services and was used for placing bids as well as monitoring existing bids. Shopping comparison site Kelkoo is also popular.
The sites attracting the biggest numbers of users and subscribers are chat sites and sports sites – both big successes in the existing mobile portal worlds and are turning out to be strong revenue-generators in the i-mode world too. In addition, gaming is very popular, with customers get substantially better value from subscribing to an i-mode games site – five games for the price of three elsewhere, for example. Finally, established online brands such as Filmnight are seeing substantially more traffic on i-mode than they are on other WAP services.
New HandsetsOne of the factors that has held back i-mode growth has been the range and availability of handsets. Riddell admitted that if they had more handsets subscriber numbers would have been more. New handsets from Motorola - the L6 and L7 - are being launched in the next few weeks with the K610im Sony Ericsson’s first phone to support the i-mode™ service will be available exclusively from O2 UK in Q4 2006.
LBSWith the value add benefits of Location Based Services mostly not being realised, O2 is including the service free to vendors on i-mode. "This will initially be targeted at specific vendors" said Minhas.
Mobile EmailEvery i-mode user has a unique email address and 25% of the user base is using email with their i-mode handset. Of the 150 content vendors, 40 are actively using the integrated email service to communicate with their customers. “Sites that have implemented i-mail™ have attracted more subscribers than those who haven't – clear evidence that the ability of content providers to establish unique one-to-one relationships with their customers has a positive impact on their revenues."
"We already know some of the developments that NTT DoCoMo is planning for the future, so we are looking at areas such as RSS feeds as part of the service in the future” said Jag Minhas, O2's i-mode Architect.
"We are looking to extending imail to include ability to get existing ISP email" This is likely to be launched in the next few months. Minhas also said that interoperable Instant Messaging was on the roadmap for 2007.
"We are really pleased how well consumers have taken to i-mode" Riddell said. It is still early days, and the service needs to mature, but we are very positive about the emerging usage trends. While some early adopters are still testing the waters with free content, many others are subscribing to multiple sites and taking full advantage of the benefits of the i-mode business subscription model. Subscriber numbers are growing fast, and that growth is being driven by the content providers who are making the fullest use of i-mode’s features.