i-Mode is a Internet service widely used in Japan to who ever is subscribed to the NTT DoCoMo cell phone network.
In 1997, the NTT DoCoMO network was on the brink of collapse due to Japan's mobile phone industry rapid growth and call quality on their network. NTT DoCoMO needed a solution without re-developing the whole cell-phone network. Another factor to the developing of i-Mode was that Internet connection in Japan was too expensive thus i-Mode was born.
I-Mode uses the standard Internet protocols HTML, HTTP, TCP/IP and recently Java and its success rate grew fast, reaching 29.5 subcribers to the i-Mode service by 2001 and 2 other competitors J-Phone, with the J-Sky service, and KDDI, with the EZweb service.
In Japan the brand of mobiles are not NEC, Panasonic or Fujitsu but the names of the Network they are on e.g. NTT DoCoMo's N503i and the N stands for NEC.
Anyway, the way i-Mode connects to websites are as follows:
- Official - Sites that are approved by i-Mode are connected straight to the i-Mode server which requests information.
- Unofficial - There are more unofficial sites then official but the amount of people goto unofficial sites are approximitely the same as official due to connection times and convenience. The i-Mode server has to go through the internet to get the site and then people have to go through a search engine which takes time due to relatively slow connection. Except if they have a 3G mobile.
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