250,000 users in six months
O2 has said that since it launched its i-mode service in October 2005 it has signed up 250,000 customers, has 150 sites available, and has 75% of users active at least once a month. This, it says, makes it the fastest growing i-mode service outside Japan.
The operator also says that the first six months of commercial operation show that i-mode users consumer twice as much data as on comparable WAP services.
Grahame Riddell, Head of Content Marketing at O2 said; “We are really pleased how well consumers have taken to i-mode. It is still early days, and the service needs to mature, but we are very positive about the emerging usage trends. While some early adopters are still testing the waters with free content, many others are subscribing to multiple sites and taking full advantage of the benefits of the i-mode business subscription model. Subscriber numbers are growing fast, and that growth is being driven by the content providers who are making the fullest use of i-mode’s features.
“In particular, sites that have implemented i-mail have attracted more subscribers than those who haven’t – clear evidence that the ability of content providers to establish unique one-to-one relationships with their customers has a positive impact on their revenues. We already know some of the developments that NTT DoCoMo is planning for the future, so we are looking at areas such as RSS feeds and IM as part of the service in the future.”
O2 says the sites attracting the biggest numbers of users and subscribers are chat sites and sports sites – both big successes in the existing mobile portal worlds. In addition, gaming is popular, with customers typically getting five games for the price of three elsewhere. Finally, the operator says that established online brands such as Filmnight are seeing substantially more traffic on i-mode than they are on other WAP services.