There was an interesting letter in yesterday's technology section in the paper, from one Andy Roberts in Cardiff. He wonders what all the fuss is about concerning i-Mode, the new Internet on your mobile service from 02. His point is that he can already get the Internet on his mobile phone, using the same websites people already offer on, er, the Web, so why pay extra and have a specialis i-Mode button?
Well, up to a point, Lord Copper. Clearly the idea is primarily to bolster 02's position in the market and its share price; like any business they present things as a customer benefit when their responsibility is to make their own operations more profitable. That's fair enough. But let's look also at the issue of getting a website on your phone; I have a Sony Ericsson t610. It's a couple of years old but it works and I like it, so I continue with it, and its screen is far too small to view a proper website. If there were a site tailored for it - or whose code made it adapt to whatever phone I happened to have at the time - I could see the value.
That's the principle of i-Mode. I'll be picking up a review unit in the coming week and will have a play with it - I'll let you know how I get on.
