O2 UK waves goodbye to i-mode
Rating: sayonara
by Bena Roberts
About three years ago I was invited to a small exclusive analyst event in London at the Cohn & Wolfe offices on behalf of O2. O2’s Graham Riddell was there and the briefing was about O2’s new competitive weapon – i-mode. Six months later, O2 Germany never even managed to launch i-mode and i-mode was rubbed off the competitive agenda at CeBIT altogether. That unfortunately was already the beginning of the end.
10 million pounds later what’s left? Nothing. O2 drops i-mode and once again another i-mode strategy in Europe fails. Bouygues remains the only western European operator that is remotely successful.
It’s easy to say “I told you so”. But at the time I was also a huge fan of i-mode and felt it had potential in Europe. I have just re-read an old Current Analysis report I wrote at the time and it’s very bullish. Oh dear.
Looking back – the services were fine – but what went wrong is poor tariffs on O2’s side and an even worse mobile device range. The devices killed i-mode even before it had a chance to succeed.
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