home   |   contact us   |   subscribe to rss

IDG likes i-mode ‘very much’

February 28th, 2005 by mhjones

I’m pleased to announce one of my projects has hit the ground running today.

IDG Communications has signed up as one of Telstra’s content partners to deliver news and information via i-mode (Telstra’s FAQ page is here). And today we launched the i-mode versions of Computerworld, PC World and GamePro magazines. In geek-speak, it means we have built cHTML versions of each site and linked them with Telstra’s i-mode portal – a feature built into new i-mode phones being sold in Australia.

While i-mode is a global (and non-US) phenomenon, it’s obviously not yet a household name in Australia. That being said, I can see the opportunity. It’s clear to me that our audiences don’t want to be constantly tied to a PC/Mac and browser. Mobile phone sales a booming in Australia, and i-mode is a great opportunity for IDG to test the mobile waters by offering people a different way to access our content.

Now for the ‘but,’ full disclosure statement. Official i-mode sites are subscription based. Australia is following the rest of the world in this regard. We charge $4 per month for unlimited access to content on Computerworld and PC World, and $3 for GamePro. In addition, Telstra charges 2.2 cents per kilobyte.

Do I think our subscription rates are too expensive? Given the amount of content available, no, not really. We’re also charging the same rate as i-mode sites like Fairfax’s SMH and The Age.

Do I think Telstra’s 2.2 per KB is too expensive? Yep. And I believe they should move to a cheaper rate or flat rate pricing scheme ASAP. I’ve also told them as much. The official line is that it’s ‘under review’.

That said, Telstra’s "I like i-mode very much" $7 million marketing campaign includes picking up the cost of your content subscriptions for the first two months while it evaluates user reaction to the service. So if you’re due to sign up for a new contract, get your hands on a mobile that includes i-mode. The models I have tested don’t attract an up-front premium for i-mode.

So, lemme know what you think? Telstra is pretty ambitious about its ability to attract millions of people to this platform. Will they succeed? Do you use similar services from Optus, Vodafone, or 3?

Tagged: Mobile
Comments: 1 Comment »

One Response to “IDG likes i-mode ‘very much’”

  1. Dave King Says:
    March 7th, 2005 at 9:53 am

    Mark, congratulations on taking a punt with i-mode. At this stage of the mobile internet’s development, I think content providers should try everything and analyse usage, behaviour, revenue etc. I have mixed feelings about i-mode. Obviously DoMoco have built a robust and usable content economy but the key differences between internet usage in Japan and Australia have been well documented. Australians are used to slow, cheap dial-up net access, and few pay-for-content models have got much traction here. Japan has a much higher proportion of people using non-PC devices to get data (i mean the Super Famicom was online!), and as such DoCoMo have both taken advantage of that, and built on it.

    i-Mode here has an interesting gaol – to make the mobile internet mainstream. Early adopters of mobile technology have been pulling down HTML pages in their mobile Opera browsers for a while now. And whilst slightly aghast at the the per KB rate, it’s convenience makes it’s palatable. And although WAP is often referred to as a failure, many of us have found usefulness in certain types of usage (news, sports, stocks, email etc).

    So i can’t see the mobile internet advocates paying an extra $4 per month for one content provider. And that leaves the key target segment for i-mode being ‘normal people’ (is that a segment?).

    And there’s where it starts to look interesting. i-Mode needs to convert people who don’t already care about the mobile internet, into users – and convince them that these kind of content economics are worthwhile. This reminds me of the evangelism we went through for the desktop internet in the mid-nineties… and content was free!.

Leave a Comment