[Ben]

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/07/17/o2_imode/

No surprises there, then! :D I wonder if having the iPhone would have anything to do with ditching the flagging I-Mode initiative? Anyway, I'm sure nobody will miss it.

[Hands0n]

Yea and good riddance to possibly the most ridiculous technology since Rabbit! What on earth were O2's execs thinking? Certainly any advice they were given was extremely bad and I hope they've either fired the individual or promoted them off to where they can't do any more damage!!

[solo12002]

Full of hype.

FFS lord knows why O2 assed about with I Mode in the first place, no one wanted it, they wanted 3g.

I wonder how much money that cost, that could of been spent rolling out 3G?

Still look on the bright side it only took them TWO years to figure that one one.

[3g-g]

O2 saw 45million Japanese punters using it non stop and thought, we'll have a bit of that, imagine 45 million people using data. Unfortunately, they also forgot to do anything about the cost of the data, because in Japan using iMode is all included in your monthly cost, my brothers is about £30 a month, and he uses his handset all the time! It's quite possbly the most useful thing I've seen on a handset, but O2 just mucked it up, they didn't implement it the way the Japanese use it. Could of been good, but it wasn't!

[Hands0n]

O2, like all British companies bringing in technologies like this, simply got greedy! "Oh I know, we'll sell iMode at prevailing data rates" ..... NOT!

I think the likes of T-Mobile have demonstrated most capably what a fixed-price data bundle can do for sales! Theirs is the most generous of the lot - I think O2's is perhaps the meanest second only to Vodafone......

[Ben]

This is quite a nice summary of why the demise might have happened. I think if more mobile TV analysts considered how many kids have TV in their bedrooms then we'd simply never have mobile TV in the UK ;)

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/07/23/imode_fails/

[Hands0n]

I'm inclined to agree with the article wholeheartedly. The corporate greed kicked in and noone gave a thought for the cultural differences that drive these things. This same is repeated throughout much of what the large corporates do. They get visibly frustrated when they cannot import an idea in from another nation state.

Mobile TV is a dead duck here. Whip out a mobile TV in the street and you'll likely be mugged for it! School? Office? No chance, we don't have that kind of leisure time. Home? Well the article covers that angle nicely. My own experience bears that out - every bedroom here has a TV set and later this year they'll likely be upgraded to 32" TFTs for around £250 a pop (that is how cheap you can get the stuff these days - don't pay Come'it the £999.99 they're asking for 32" TFT TVs!!).

So, I ask all mobile ops, if the kids can lounge around in front of 32" widescreens, why do they think they'll opt to squint at a 2.5" screen?

I asked my 17-year old if moble TV would be of interest to her. "Wot for?" she said in her best Norf Kent accent. This is the one who is glued to the set when she's at home - a huge BB fan, you'd think she'd be a natural candidate for mobile TV. "Nah!" she continues "That wot we've got Sky+ for" - oh and her Freeview receiver in her room has an 80GB HDD so she can record it there.

With all of this much-easier-to-use technology on the go, serious mobile TV is dead before it gets off the ground! It'll always be a novelty here in the UK.