Eurotechnology telecom services:

-We work on many telecoms projects, and advise CEOs of major corporations and Goverments on Japan's telecom sector.

News & events:

MIT Enterprise Forum:
"Next generation Electronic Payments Solutions"
in Boston (MA), April 19, 2010,
Register here
subscribe to our Mobile Payment reports

CNBC TV interviews

Survey:

Take a survey to help us serve you better

DoCoMo and the i-Mode Ecosystem

Overview report of DoCoMo, the world's most admired mobile operator, and i-Mode, the pioneering mobile internet system with 48.5 Million paying subscribers which started in Japan in February 1999.
Version 25 of June 1, 2009
approx. 187 pages, including approx. 48 Figures and 140 Photographs and 10 tables, pdf-format, 7 Mbyte
[BUY Single copy license : US$ 475]
[BUY Corporate license: US$ 2375]
Any questions? Contact us because we need your feedback!

4. Develop for i-Mode:

4.1 How can I develop content for i-Mode:

imode uses cHTML, which is a subset of HTML as well as XML. You need to develop your content in cHTML. cHTML has been submitted to the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) in 1984:
http://www.w3.org/Submission/1998/04/
http://www.w3.org/TR/1998/NOTE-compactHTML-19980209/
imode also uses special tags in addition to ordinary HTML, e.g. a tag which allows to place a voice call by placing a link, and other extra tags.
imode also uses special characters for trains, shinkansen, taxi, kisses, joy, sadness, hot spring baths etc to express emotions, etc in daily life.

4.2 What is cHTML?

cHTML stands for "compact HTML" and is the content description language used in imode. cHTML is a subsite of HTML plus some additional tags, characters and features.
cHTML has been submitted to the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) in 1984:
http://www.w3.org/Submission/1998/04/
http://www.w3.org/TR/1998/NOTE-compactHTML-19980209/
imode also uses special tags in addition to ordinary HTML, e.g. a tag which allows to place a voice call by placing a link, and other extra tags.
You can find a list of these tags on DoCoMo's website.
imode also uses special characters for trains, shinkansen, taxi, kisses, joy, sadness, hot spring baths etc to express emotions, etc in daily life.
You can find a list of DoCoMo's image characters (emoji) on DoCoMo's website. Recently the variation of cHTML used for imode is also called iHTML.

4.3 What about i-mode emulators?

A range of i-Mode emulators is in principle available, however it is highly recommended to test on real phones.

4.4 What about e-Moji (emoticons)?

Imode (and competing services such as EZweb and Vodafone-Live!) use 100s of special symbols and characters (e.g. for kisses, hot bath, Shinkansen train etc), which are not part of the normal set of Japanese characters. A Japanese enabled web browser will show these special characters as a question mark. These picture characters are called "emoji" in Japanese ("e" = picture, "moji" = character). The e-moji are not compatible between the competing systems and are part of the competitive strategy.

4.5 What about JAVA applications?

JAVA enabled handsets were introduced in early 2001. JAVA enabled handsets contain the K virtual machine (KVM) from SUN. Users can download JAVA applets into the handsets for games, agent type services and other applications. Today a large fraction of handsets of all three competing mobile internet systems use JAVA, and JAVA applets are a very important component of Japans mobile internet systems.

4.6 What about FLASH?

All recent Japanese mobile phones can interpret FLASH content, and for example, the official i-Mode menu page is normally downloaded in FLASH.

4.7 Official i-Mode menu sites vs inofficial sites?

i-Mode sites may fulfill many different types of functions. One class of i-Mode sites are built to sell content, such as mobile music, cartoons, mobile manga, news, weather or travel information. Such sites are best managed as official i-Mode menu sites, where a subscription fee can be collected from registered users via DoCoMo's billing systems. However, online shopping sites, airline ticket reservations, train reservation sites are not compatibel with DoCoMo's billing system. For such sites it is not essential to be within the official menu system, which makes administration much easier.