Just off the phone with 02, which is full of its forthcoming i-Mode service. The idea is that you'll be able to get loads of mobile services on your phone. This might sound familiar. When WAP first launched it was supposed to deliver all of that, and more. But the handsets and the bandwidth were against it - when so few companies had websites, how were they supposed to understand WAP?
i-Mode is different, but in spite of a lot of 02's claims about open technology and ease of use for businesses (you can set up your i-Mode page for around £10K, they reckon, making it more accessible than WAP because you don't have to re-code it for different phones) the real reason this might take off this time is because it's so much later than the WAP launch. People won't boggle any more at the idea of a data service on their phone, they'll ask how quickly it works. People won't go 'coo, look at that' at four lines of text, they'll grumble if it's not in decent colour.
The only snag I can see is that 02 has the UK exclusive on i-Mode for ten years. This means if you want to check it on another phone you can't, and if you want to use i-Mode in your marketing mix you're stuck marketing to 02 customers only with that technology.
That might be enough at first, and if the company can persuade people to start using their phones for shopping and e-mail in numbers then it'll grow the whole market. But sooner or later - and ten years is a long time - they'll start hitting the ceiling of just how many customers can be serviced by a single network, and that's when the bleating will start.
