How successful were two websites in two different countries in the promotion of the imode system

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AA3414 Integrated projects for 3D Interactive Digital Media

The promotion and Dissemination of Digital Media

Tutor: Dew Harrison

Yeuk-kei Chan (Gillian)

0407009

Design for Digital Media

Stage 3

30th November 2005

How successful were two websites in two different countries in the promotion of the imode system.

How successful were two websites in two different countries in the promotion of the imode system.

The book “Web Design Garage” mentions an important idea about websites: The Good websites are not just nice looking, the structure will be linked well and make everything logical. In this essay I will discuss two Imode websites, which are not in the same culture and country. One is used by O2, the British mobile company whose consortium recently imported the Imode system from Japan mobile company ‘NTT DoCoMo’. Far Eastone, the Taiwan mobile company, uses the other. I am going to contrast how successful were two websites in two different countries in the promotion of the imode system.

First of all, I will introduce the general information about the Imode system: when it started, which age group frequently uses it, how it works and why it is interesting.

“NTT DoCoMo's imode is a wireless internet service for imode mobile phones using HTTP, popular in Japan and also increasing in popularity elsewhere. It was inspired by the drawbacks of WAP being discussed at the time. A rough concept aimed for businessmen introduced to DoCoMo by McKinsey in 1997. After a 2-year period of developments at NTT DoCoMo, imode was launched as a mass-market product in Japan in February 22, 1999”.

Imode also cuts marketing costs, offers fast access to data services, and more security. Imode gives content providers a direct relationship with customers as every user has an email account associated with their handset.

In 2001 this company made a survey about the user group: Out of the 103,000 people who had a mobile phone, 43,000 users were using the imode system. Male possessed nearly 78%. There were four age groups: first group was 10-19 year old at 3%, second group was 20-29 year old at 35%, third group was 30-39 year old at 42% and the last group was over 40 year old at 20%. The number of users of the imode system is still increasing in Japan. People can browse the Internet anytime anywhere which is really convenient. As of June 2005, imode has had 45 million customers in Japan and over 5 million in the rest of the world. Imode is being provided world-wide through DoCoMo's partners through a licensing scheme involving mobile operators in the following countries: , the , and . , ,  and  have launched imode services on October 2005. The worldwide partnership is called the imode Alliance. This figure gives an idea about which age group uses this service, which country has this system and which other companies around the world would like to import this service.

The history of the Internet is very short.  In 1994 Tim Berners-Lee published W3C; it was the beginning of the Internet. W3C means the World Wide Web consortium. Since people use the Internet like a community tool and browse the website to search for information, encouraging the rise of commerce. Earl Shorris said: The Internet was indeed the Age of information, but information was not the precursor of knowledge; it was the tool of salesman.

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In June 2002, Far Eastone was the second company in Asia to promote the imode system. These services included Internet banking, news information, entertainment, search portals (google) and the most popular ‘imode email’ of the five services available. Customers might peruse websites anywhere and anytime. The main imode service within the Far Eastone website was very youthful, diversifying, lively and colorful (see Figure 1). It makes people feel welcome and encourages them to be interested in it and explains how it works (see Figure 2, 3) also shows which latest mobile phones can use this system (see Figure 4). ...

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