As you might be aware from reading today's paper as well as this blog passim, 02 is launching i-mode today. This is like having the Internet on your mobile phone; unlike WAP you get an i-mode button on your phone, all the pages will be designed to fit onto it and there will be different versions depending on the device you're using.
All of which is fine, but I can't help feeling that the idea of a universal mobile Net is slightly undermined by the fact that 02 has an exclusive on this for years - so if you're an Orange, Voda or T-mobile customer, tough luck, you can't have it.
Clearly 02 is a private business interested in capturing customers, but efforts to establish a new standard have historically done better if they push it across different vendors rather than stick to their own proprietary offering - the classic example being the IBM-compatible PC v. the Apple Macintosh, at a time when the Mac had the mouse and ease of use and the PC didn't. Microsoft and IBM pushed to become standard rather than exclusive and the result is that the Mac now has about six per cent of the market and that's a good result because only recently it had only three.
We'll see how this one works out, but I'm not sure that starting with an exclusive, no matter how successful the technology has been in other territories, is the best way to begin.
