| This Weekly Newsletter on the i-mode business ecosystem is bought to you by Walter Adamson, Australia's leading i-mode strategist and consultant for content providers, platform providers and businesses. |
Top Stories
DoCoMo zero-rates email between family membersi-mode glows in Bulgaria
3G i-mode blowing in the Wind
Bouygues pings Nextreaming for i-mode video content partners
ODD SPOT: India contemplates World Wrestling Entertainment i-mode hook-up
1. DoCoMo zero-rates email between family members
Earlier this month DoCoMo announced that it will become the first telecom carrier to let family members exchange emails for free, starting Oct 1.
The free service is designed to expand its line-up of discount services targeting families and entice more families to subscribe. The free service for families will also apply to the firm's FOMA 3G service under which both video and still photo images taken with a camera-equipped mobile phone can be transmitted at high speed, it said.
With the flat-rate FOMA service and now free emails between families we wonder what affect this will all have on the relationship and structure of the content industry.
Although DoCoMo was the last to concede, grudgingly, to the move to flat-rate it is now taking advantage of its low network operating costs to squeeze the other operators, and particularly Vodafone who has the highest cost-per-packet network operating costs.
Because operators would want to make up for their lost data traffic revenue it is generally expected that operators will put the squeeze in some way on content providers. How this can be done without mutual harm is not clear.
But on the other hand a cleverly designed flat-rate package, monitored by detailed usage analysis, can often lead to good margins and profits for low-cost operators.
One thing is for sure – flat-rate is an evolving new force that will reshape the mobile content industry in ways which we do not yet understand.
For more information:
-read this article on flat-rates in The Feature
2. i-mode glows in Bulgaria
Globul, the cousin of Greek i-mode operator Cosmote, plans to offer DoCoMo's wireless internet service in Bulgaria. Cosmo Bulgaria Mobile EAD (Globul) is a 100%-owned OTE subsidiary, managed by Cosmote, operating a GSM 900 / 1800 license. This is Cosmote's biggest market after Greece.
Greek telecommunications company OTE is the owner of Cosmote and Globul.
OTE operates throughout the Balkans and holds strategic stakes in Rom Telecom, the Romanian state operator, and in state-controlled Telekom Serbia, alongside Telecom Italia. It also controls 90 per cent of AMC, the Albanian mobile operator.
Globul is performing exceptionally well under Cosmote’s leadership and marked a 86 per cent growth in operating profits for the second quarter of 2004 compared to the same period last year. For example, subscription fee income grew by 90%, including the prepaid packages offered by the company. Income from telephone traffic grew by 104% and SMS traffic revenue grew by 53%.
According to official information recently released by Globul, the number of subscribers for the second quarter of 2004 rose by 90 per cent, compared to the same period of 2003.
Pre-paid customers reached 829,000, while contract customers reached 458,000, providing a pre-paid/contract mix of 64%/36%. This increase was driven both by improved market penetration and market share gains.
Two other interesting facts about the performance are that territorial coverage increased to 82% vs. 57% at the end of Q2 2003 and population coverage increased to 97% vs. 86%.
Bulgaria has announced a strategy to launch UMTS (3G) and the regulator will award two full licences with a frequency resource of 25 MHz each. Bulgarian Telecommunication Company, MobilTel and GloBul, Bulgaria's three telecom operators, are expected to show interest in the offer. New arrivals are possible but not very likely, according to Transport and Communications Minister Nikolai Vassilev.
Cosmote, DoCoMo's seventh European partner, will also start the i-mode service in Albania "at a later stage," the company said last week.
For more information:
- read this report in the Sofia Echo about Globul's performance
3. 3G i-mode blowing in the Wind
Wind, an i-mode alliance partner since the end of 2003, is going "to launch UMTS on i-mode platform" in October this year.
Wind started-up operations early in 1999 as the first European operator of integrated mobile, landline and Internet services for consumer and business clients. Its nationwide mobile network covers over 98% of the population and as of March, 31 2004, Wind boasted 28.3 million customers, including 10.2 mobile users.
Wind's 3G network upgrade has a quirky history since back in April 2001, Nokia issued a statement declaring that "Wind has chosen Nokia as its strategic partner to ensure the network’s fast deployment and effective launch of UMTS service in Italy."
However in March 2004 Siemens issued a press release announcing that it “has been chosen as a radio access network (base station) supplier for Wind’s UMTS (Universal Mobile Telecommunications System) network”!!
According to a report in Unstrung Kaupthing Bank analyst Esa Nurkka said “It is interesting to see that lately Nokia has lost three major W-CDMA contracts that they originally announced in 2000 or 2001, and all of them (Telefònica Spain, NetCom AS, and Wind) were lost to Siemens.”
Nokia was keen to play down the loss. “We were a supplier for the minor part [of the network],” a spokeswoman told Unstrung. “It was a commercial decision by Wind, rather than a technical one.”
For more information:
- see Unstrung's report of Nokia's demise
4. Bouygues pings Nextreaming for i-mode video content partners
Bouygues Telecom has selected Nextreaming as its preferred 3GPP encoder for its i-mode partners. Europe's largest mobile content provider 123 Multimedia, has already used the solution to encode its multimedia services for i-mode.
Bouygues launched i-mode in November 2002 and now has around 800,000 subscribers who are able to access 265+ sites.
123 Multimedia is the first i-mode partner to use the Nextreaming solution with Bouygues Telecom. (Japan’s Index Corporation, has agreed to acquire 66.65% of the outstanding common stock of 123 Multimedia.)
123 Funclips is one of Bouygues Telecom's most popular i-mode services, featuring a variety of high quality downloadable video clips and animations from film and TV.
Nextreaming's solutions gives the Bouygue i-mode content partners the power to create videos and to quickly create large amounts of high quality 3GPP or MPEG multimedia content with forward lock content protection.
"The high quality encoding platform represents another important step towards mass usage of our i-mode enabled mobile multimedia services," says
Cedric Nicolas, i-mode expertise and roadmap manager from Bouygues Telecom. "We have adopted an approach that is particularly open to third-party content and applications; encouraging our partners to embrace our i-mode offering. Our decision to recommend the Nextreaming encoder will contribute to the successful launch of added-value video download services for our customers."
Nextreaming honed its expertise when developing steaming solutions for SK Telecom's handset manufacturer
SK Teletech - in particular for the extremely successful series of multimedia handsets, such as the IM-6400, IM-6500, and IM-7200. (The IM-7200 was selected as the most fashionable handset in 2004 Korea Design Power Index.)
For more information:
- see Nextreaming's website
ODD SPOT: India contemplates World Wrestling Entertainment i-mode hook-up
Integrated sports marketing company Total Sports Asia (TSA) has launched operations in India, based in Mumbai.
Arguably TSA's biggest property in its bag 
with respect to India is World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE). It is looking to do mobile tie-ups in India regarding WWE. Fans will be able to download ringtones, images and other content. In Japan such a deal is already in place through an alliance with i-mode.
TSA is active in the mobile content segment, managing sports sites as well as designing them. It represents Ladbrokes.com. TSA also serves as a bookmaking partner to EPL clubs Liverpool, Manchester United and Arsenal. TSA also works out sponsorship deals for these clubs. TSA is based in Kuala Lumpur.
For more information:
- see TSA's website
| - end of newsletter - |
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