Lukewarm local acceptance of Japan's "i-mode" mobile Internet service is a good sign since the mobile market is currently saturated, pundits said yesterday.
KG Telecommunication Co (和信電訊), a subsidiary of Japan-based NTT DoCoMo, announced yesterday the company has attracted some 22,000 i-mode users over the past three months. Of those about 50 percent are new KG Telecom clients, while the remaining 50 percent are existing subscribers and just newly upgraded to i-mode.
"Taking into consideration the slow economy and the nation's nearly saturated mobile market into account, the outcome [of i-mode subscriber number] is positive," said Ann Liang (
Another analyst agreed that the market was saturated.
"With Taiwan's mobile-phone-service penetration rate extremely high, it's very difficult for operators to gain new subscribers," said George Wu (吳裕良), a telecommunications-industry analyst at Primasia Securities Co in Taipei.
According to Directorate General of Telecommunications, as of July the nation's mobile-phone-service penetration rate was over 100 percent, surpassing Luxembourg to rank the highest in the world.
"This successful achievement has established a proven i-mode business model in the wireless-Internet market," said Leslie Koo (
He added that although the company originally shot for a higher target number, the result is acceptable and encouraging.
On June 20, KG Telecom launched the i-mode service and became the third mobile-phone company in the world to offer i-mode.
In March of this year, Royal KPN Mobile NV, the largest Dutch cellphone company, began to offer i-mode services in Germany and the Netherlands.
The i-mode service acceptance levels in Europe and in Taiwan are pretty similar. The i-mode service's penetration rate in Germany and the Netherlands is about 0.1 percent, Liang said.
KG Telecom yesterday also reported, as of September, it's i-mode service has reached a 0.1 percent penetration rate in Taiwan.
The company hopes to attract more than 50,000 i-mode subscribers by year end, and estimates that figure will reach a critical mass of 100,000 in March of next year, Koo said.
Meanwhile, Primasia's Wu said "that target is hard to achieve."
This is because more than 80 percent of the company's 22,000 new i-mode users chose the service because of the well-known "i-mode" brand, but the craze may fade, he said.
"It will be very difficult for KG Telecom to continuously expand i-mode's market share ... unless they can offer more attractive mobile content," Wu added.
Liang said although KG Telecom has linked with nearly 100 content providers, it still doesn't offer unique services.
The most popular content in i-mode are ring tone downloads, graphic downloads and real time news -- the same as most mobile operators around the world offer, she said.
Limited handset choice seems to be another hurdle.
"They have to increase the variety of i-mode handsets as soon as possible in an effort to boost market base," Liang said.
In addition to the NEC N530i handset, the company plans to introduce another Toshiba handset late this year, Koo said.
The company is in talks with several mobile-phone makers such as Motorola Inc, Samsung Electronics Corp, NEC and Inventec Co's (
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