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Japan’s NTT DoCoMo has denied rumours it is looking for a new i-mode partner in the UK – for now. The Financial Times reported late yesterday that Hutchison-controlled 3, in which DoCoMo has a 20 percent stake, did not intend to adopt the i-mode platform, leaving DoCoMo without a UK presence. The Japanese company, the report claimed, responded by saying if 3 did not adopt i-mode it would go elsewhere.
Since then, DoCoMo has stressed that talks with Hutchison are still continuing. “We have no plans at the moment to seek a new UK partner,” a spokeswoman said. Read into this what you like. It may well be true that the Japanese mobile giant has not yet given up on its UK partner, but who can blame 3 for wanting to get its 3G offering right before introducing another major brand? It is hardly a surprise that i-mode is not a top priority for the operator, which is struggling to convince a sceptical market that it can still achieve its target of signing up 1 million UK customers by year end.
i-mode, which has been highly successful in Japan with 39.5 million subscribers as of last week, has recently been introduced in Spain (by Telefonica Moviles) and Italy (Wind). It has also been adopted by KPN-owned operators in Benelux and Germany, as well as Bouygues in France, and to date has signed up almost 700,000 users across Europe. This leaves the UK as the only major European market without an i-mode offering.
This raises the question of where else DoCoMo can go, should its partnership with 3 turn sour. Unlike France or Germany, where it has teamed up with the smaller market players, the UK mobile market is fairly evenly divided between four major operators, all of which are powerful enough to push their own branded services. Spain was the first country where i-mode was introduced by the dominant operator, though without using the brand name. However, the technology is facing tough competition from Vodafone Live! with more than 2 million subscribers, and a growing number of similar multimedia packages, including T-Mobile’s t-zones and, most recently, sunrise live, announced by the Swiss operator sunrise yesterday. It may well be time for the Japanese company to rethink its European strategy in order to regain its position as market leader, rather than follower.
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