DoCoMo aims to build upon i-mode success

Japan has been at the forefront of the third generation mobile phone technology known as i-mode. Based on a new technology enabling the wireless communication of images, it allows a mobile to be used for a complete new range of applications, going beyond voice and text transmission.

According to Dr Keiji Tachikawa, president and chief executive officer of NTTDoCoMo, the Japanese company that has pioneered the technology, its actual and potential applications include: constant connection to the Internet and databases; mobile TV and video on demand; access to electronic newspapers and books; electronic settlement of bills; and a host of other features.

Looking ahead further, mobile communication of the other three senses - taste, smell and touch - is being actively researched by the company's 700 engineers. They are examining how to generate and eliminate smells as a clue to how they might be communicated. NTT DoCoMo is the mobile division of the state telecommunications company in Japan. Dr Tachikawa explained the company's strategy at a conference of EU and Japanese journalists in Dublin and later spoke to The Irish Times. Dr Tachikawa (62) has worked with NTT for 36 years, and has a background in engineering and communications technology. He explains that the trend of the information revolution has been from digitisation to networking to personalisation, as mobile phones and personal computers begin to merge.

In Japan, the number of i-mode subscribers had reached 19.8 million by the end of February, with 39,600 general sites serving them. "By 2010 the non-voice image data sector will represent 70-80 per cent of the Japanese market, compared to 20-30 per cent for the voice sector."

At present the IT sector represents some 10 per cent of Japan's GDP. "There are two different dimensions of an IT-led recovery: using the new economy as an engine, and enabling the old economy to take advantage of the benefits of IT. If a good match can be found between the two roles, recovery could come quite soon," he says.

The company's development scenarios envisage that by 2010, mobile innovations will have penetrated wide sectors of the Japanese economy and those of other developed countries. Technology is changing so fast that 80 per cent of industrial output by then will be attributable to innovations made in the previous 10 years. Dr Tachikawa explained the problems involved in creating a an international platform to enable i-mode attain what he envisages as a fourth generation of mobile technology: "a single united technology involving the whole world with no competition in technical standards."

NTTDoCoMo has made strategic alliances with other companies to generalise its preferred platform, radio wideband CDMA. They include Hutchinson 3G in the UK, KPN Mobile in the Netherlands and AT&T Wireless in the US.

Whereas i-mode is based on html technology, WAP service phones use hdml. Work is proceeding to find a common language uniting them.

"There is no international organisation to provide regulation and lay down standards for building such systems, authenticating users and providing security. It will be necessary to agree methods for simultaneous automatic translation and suitable compression technologies for music and videos," says Dr Tachikawa.