Last year DoCoMo’s “i-mode” hit the headlines of major business magazines and papers. Thanks to the i-mode service, Japan’s major cities are now dotted with silent mobile phone users furiously typing on little keypads. i-mode is a mobile-based Internet access service developed by DoCoMo—a dedicated mobile unit of Japan’s national network carrier NTT.

Since its launch in February 1999, i-mode’s subscriber numbers have grown to over 17 million as of January 2001. DoCoMo is the only company so far to be able to cash in on the concept of a Web phone. Elsewhere such services are known by the acronym WAP (Wireless Application Protocol) and WAP phones are being vigorously promoted by mobile phone giants such as Ericsson and Nokia with somewhat sluggish up-take by the market. With the imminent transition to the third generation (3g) mobile technology which features Internet access, the world’s phone companies are keen to get behind the i-mode success story.

Does space matter?

The first question likely to come to people’s mind on hearing the Web phone concept is: who wants to access the Internet via a tiny screen on a mobile phone? Being firmly convinced by his teenage daughter’s dedication to text messaging on her mobile, DoCoMo’s head Keiichi Enoki had to remind NTT board members that the target market for i-mode is their kids’ age group, and these users are unlikely to ask this question (although it turned out that half of i-mode users today are actually in the over 30 age group)!

It is well known that text messaging over the mobile phone has been extremely popular among teenagers particularly in Europe and some Asian countries; evidently the limited screen size had not put them off. In Japan particularly, prior to the mobile era, pagers had enjoyed great success as a medium for sending text messages. In fact, the limitation of screen space had led to the ingenious use of numbers as phonetically coded messages.

An array of pre-installed icons also became vital to effective and succinct messaging. Apparently one brand of pager outdid the others simply because it had a heart symbol available for messaging. Does this mean that the Japanese have a particular penchant towards the use of icons as a way of expressing themselves? The nation’s love of Manga (cartoons) may come to mind while others may consider the importance of certain nonverbal cues in Japanese communication.

Interestingly, comparative studies (Sugimoto & Levin, 2000) conducted between US and Japanese e-mail messages has found a considerably higher usage of emoticons by the Japanese. Not surprising, perhaps, as Kanji (ideographs) themselves can be considered as a kind of iconic symbol whereby a single character can convey meaning. Apparently i-mode phones have nearly 200 symbols and, who knows, these may be established as a new age Kanji enabling global communication!

The medium is the message

The Japanese love for pictograms is, however, not the main reason for the success of i-mode. What seems to be the most significant factor is the clever matching of the content and the medium. DoCoMo had recognized from the start that the mobile phone is different from the computer in terms of when and how people use it to access information. This thinking avoided the pitfall of directly transferring to the mobile phone the complete range of Web pages which are intended for personal computers. To this end, i-mode was clearly selective in types of information content.

Another important success factor lies in the fact that the service was designed for the idiosyncrasies of Japanese users and society. For example, typical long hours spent on trains by commuters provide an ideal opportunity for checking e-mail, carrying out bank transactions or accessing network games over the Net. Above all, DoCoMo was successful in making the Internet access truly transparent.

While today’s computers are not entirely user-friendly, most people can manage a telephone, and i-mode deliberately retains the look of the phone with the Internet access built in as if part of telephone functionality. Apparently some users are quite unaware of the fact that the information they are receiving is coming from the Internet. And yet, in fact for many Japanese, i-mode is the Internet.

Technically speaking

The success of i-mode also comes down to its pursuit of pragmatism, which was reflected, in the technical design. i-mode phones typically weigh less than 100 grams and come with a long battery life. A similar philosophy seems to have made them opt for c-HTML (c=compact) rather than going with the WAP script called WML (Wireless Markup Language). The former provides ease of conversion from the exiting HTML-based Web sites, resulting in some 15,000 user sites being made available. It also uses c-MIDI for the transmission of music since MIDI is a commonly accepted electronic format.

Another user-friendly feature is the application of packet-switching, which allows the Internet access to be on whenever the i-mode phone is switched on. The trade-off for this function is the sluggish speed at 9.6 kbps—much slower than the 64 kbps used for the popular Japanese PHS (Personal Handy Phone Systems). However, this has clearly not deterred users. Another success factor is the relatively low charge. Instead of typical per minute telephone charging, i-mode users are charged per byte of data downloaded, making it very economical. For example, sending a 250-character e-mail message only costs around jp¥4 (4¢ us) with the monthly fee kept at jp¥300 ($3 us)—equivalent to cheap weekly magazines.

Lessons to be learnt

In bringing language and localization services to the next stage, we can perhaps learn from this story. Technology is constantly introducing new modes of communication and it is our business to enable global communication in whatever the mode people wish to interact. This will mean understanding the nature of the medium and the way people in the given culture use it.

The study mentioned earlier has found the following: “A culture which has imported a technology creates new ways of using it which are quite different from those practiced in the culture the technology originally came from, ways that are deeply grounded in the culture which adapted it” (p. 151). The i-mode story seems to demonstrate the very point. Japanese use of the Internet does not have to be the same as American use. This seems to be a good lesson that localizers should keep in mind.

References

Matsunaga, M. 2000. i-mode jiken [The i-mode Affair]. Tokyo: Kadokawa.

Sugimoto, T. & Levin, J.A. 2000. Multiple literacies and multimedia: a comparison of Japanese and American uses of the Internet. In Global Literacies and the World-Wide Web, ed. by G.E. Hawisher & C.L. Selfe. London: Routledge.