  Building on the success of its i-Mode phone in Japan, Panasonic, one of Symbian’s shareholders, is putting the final touches to its first WAP phone, the GD93. Weighing less than 90g the GD93 will provide direct access to the internet for sending and receiving emails, news and sports and weather updates.
Source : www.symbian.com
i-Mode Background
i-Mode increased its subscriber list to 4.5 million in just ten months since its inception in February 1999. The number of approved i-Mode sites jumped up to 293 by February 2000. If the unproved sites are to be included, it is estimated that there are more than 9,000 i-Mode sites in Japan. The success of i-Mode is largely made possible by DoCoMo’s sheer business muscle as the biggest network provider in Japan (and in the world). DoCoMo had the foresight to approach most of the influential information providers at a very early stage. At the same time, DoCoMo offered billing schemes that were very attractive and efficient to service providers and effortless to the subscribers. Also, i-Mode sites can be created with a subset of HTML and this made the re-purposing of existing sites into i-Mode very simple. i-Mode billing was packet-based from the beginning, contributing to its popularity since it is relatively inexpensive, even during heavy usage times.
Source : www.symbian.com
|
