InformationWeek
Defining The Business Value Of Technology
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By Jason Levitt
The Japanese love sushi. The Japanese also love I-mode. Sushi is now a dominant meal choice around the globe, but I don't think that I-mode, an Internet-access technology for cell phones, will achieve the same success outside of Japan as it has inside that country. I-mode, which went online in February 1999, has gained more than 10 million Japanese users, according to Japan's Telecommunications Carriers Association (http://www.tca.or.jp)
NTT DoCoMo (http://www.nttdocomo.com), a Japanese cell-phone carrier and the creator of I-mode, has been making partnerships to extend I-mode's reach outside Japan. But on the low end of wireless Internet access, I-mode isn't that much easier or more attractive to businesses, consumers, and cell carriers than the WAP Forum's (http://www.wapforum.org) Wireless Application Protocol, the most widely available Internet access technology in cell phones everywhere except Japan. On the high end, it's more likely that devices will use essentially the same HTML and other protocols that are used by PC desktops. More care will have to be taken for the lower bandwidth and smaller displays of handheld devices, but cutting-edge handhelds, such as Compaq's iPAC 3650 (http://www6.compaq.com/ products/handhelds/ pocketpc/index.html) prove that handhelds can handle Internet protocols.
The Wait
Though handheld wireless devices may get the bandwidth and horsepower to handle Internet protocols eventually, few have it today. So, while many businesses are still pondering when, how, and, possibly, where to extend their infrastructure into the wireless space, I-mode may well gain some traction outside of Japan. A few carriers are lining up to offer both CHTML (Compact HTML, the rendering language used to display Web pages in the I-mode browser) and WAP, and it seems only natural that CHTML, in the interim, might serve a cross-section of newer PDA and cell-phone browsers that are powerful enough to handle Internet protocols but can't browse HTML sites efficiently. The question for many businesses may be whether to support both WAP and CHTML, and the easy answer is that it may require more resources to do so than most businesses are willing to commit.
Good developer tools are still scarce for building wireless Web sites, though some major announcements have been made--such as Adobe's addition of both WML (the Wireless Markup Language, an Extensible Markup Language-based language used in WAP) and I-mode support in its Adobe GoLive product (http://www.adobe.com/ aboutadobe/pressroom/pressreleases/ 200008/20000828wireless.html).
The Right Technical Stuff
Technically, I-mode has just one especially marketable idea, and that's CHTML. Though I doubt that I-mode's infrastructure will be readily adopted around the world, CHTML just might be. There's no reason that CHTML couldn't be offered over WAP protocols, and there are rumors that the WAP Forum is considering adopting some form of XHTML (http://www.w3.org/ TR/xhtml1), an XML-based version of HTML, for a future version of the WAP standards NTT DoCoMo has indicated it's going to move from CHTML to XHTML in a future version of I-mode.
C HTML (http://www.w3.org/ TR/1998/ NOTE-compactHTML- 19980209) was submitted to the World Wide Web Consortium as a potential standard back in 1998, but never went anywhere. Essentially, it's just a subset of the HTML we use every day in our PC Web browsers minus features that don't make sense on tiny displays with little or no local storage. Features such as image maps, multiple character fonts and styles, background color and images, frames, style sheets, and scripting are not included in CHTML (GIF images are allowed, however). For the Japanese consumer market, NTT DoCoMo has added a bunch of graphical characters and a few special tags (http://www.nttdocomo.com/ ser2.htm) to CHTML that are not part of the proposed CHTML standard. But other than that, an I-mode Web page displays fine in a PC Web browser such as Netscape Communicator.
This level of compatibility has lulled some pundits into believing that businesses can create I-mode sites much easier than they can create sites using WAP's WML. Though it's true that simple static Web pages are easier to create using CHTML because developers already know HTML, businesses still have to start from scratch to create E-commerce sites using CHTML. The overall savings businesses may achieve by being able to leverage some HTML developers' tools is small compared with the resources necessary to create new applications for cell phones using either WML or CHTML. Though WML may not be as easy to use as CHTML, it's more business-savvy because it's an XML language, which means that it can be easily extended and can take advantage of XML parsers and tools.
Culture Shock
I-mode is the right technology, in the right place, at the right time. Culturally, Japan is different from the United States. Japanese households don't have as many PCs with Internet access. Also, few homes have more than one telephone line. I-mode is designed to work over packet-switched data networks. That means users are charged only for the amount of data transmitted, not for connect time (in contrast, most carriers in Europe and the United States are using circuit-switched networks for data traffic, charging by the minute for connect time). It also means that handsets can easily handle voice calls at the same time they are handling data traffic. Thus, in Japan, cell phones provide a very convenient and inexpensive voice and data platform. The result is that Japanese users are more likely to rely on their cell phones as a significant computing and messaging device.
This convenience factor is reflected not only in I-mode use but also in wireless Internet access in general. It's interesting to note that the Japanese also use WAP and J-Sky Web (yet another wireless Internet access technology) extensively. There are more than 3.5 million WAP users and more than 2.7 million J-Sky Web (http://www.mobidy.mag. keio.ac.jp) users in Japan, giving both of them strong user bases. This points to the fact that not only is I-mode successful in Japan, but cell phones in general are successful in Japan--far more so than in most other areas of the world.
The challenge for NTT DoCoMo is to convince businesses that similar success can be achieved in other cultures. They could start by offering some solid I-mode developer documentation and tools in a language other than Japanese. Meanwhile, in most areas of the world, we'll just have to settle for sushi.
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