Friday, July 26, 2013
i-MODE
1.INTRODUCTION:
You sometimes
wonder how life went on without the Internet.
The net has become such an integral part of our lifestyle that most of
us today feel the need to be connected at all times. This need has given rise to technologies like
WAP, which allow you to access the Internet through your cell phones and
PDA’s. You no longer need to be
physically near your stationary desktop at home or work in order to be
connected to the Internet.
WAP, however, is not the only
way that you can access the Internet on your mobile phone. i-mode, a mobile phone’s service, also offers
Internet access. It’s great that an
alternative wireless service like this exists, but the downside is that this
technology is at present restricted only to Japan
The world’s
largest wireless Internet boom is happening in Japan
2.DEFINITION:
First introduced in Japan
In Japan
When using i-mode services, you do not pay
for the time you are connected to a website or service, but are charged only
according to the volume of data transmitted. That means that you can stay
connected to a single website for hours without paying anything, as long as no
data is transmitted.
3.IMPORTANCE
OF i-MODE:
Using i-mode, you can:
*Reserve
airline and concert tickets, find a good restaurant, check your bank balance or
transfer money, read news and weather reports, check train schedules and city
amps, download wallpaper images and ring tone melodies, etc.
*Send
and receive e-mail not only to other i-mode users, but also to and from
personal computers and handheld devices. When you subscribe to i-mode you
automatically get an e-mail address that consists of your mobile phone number
followed by @docomo.ne.jp.
*Access the Internet directly.
4.TYPES
OF i-MODE SITES:
i-mode sites can be divided into
two basic types, official i-mode sites and unofficial or voluntary sites.
Official i-mode sites are one that appears automatically on the i-menu of any
i-mode mobile phone, because they have been officially checked, approved and
listed there by NTTDoCoMo. Unofficial sites are not listed on the i-menu, but
can be reached by typing in the URL. These sites have no official connection to
NTTDoCoMo’s i-mode service.
Some
of them are free while others charge monthly fees ranging from 100 to 300 yen.
Please note that the majority of i-mode sites are in Japanese language only!
The official
Japanese i-mode sites are categorized into:
*News/Information
*Mobile Banking
*Stocks and
Insurance
*Travel
*Ticket and Living
*Gourmet/Recipes
*Entertainment
*Town Information
*Dictionary and Convenient
tools
5.ENGLISH-LANGUAGE
i-MODE SITES:
There are not yet many
English-language sites on i-mode,
Which
is mainly due to the fact that i -mode is available only in Japan so far .The
official English language i-mode menu from NTT DoCoMo can be found on the phone
menu under “i-Menu->English->Menu List.
The i-mode-accessible
portion of the i-mode Links website (this website) provides a categorized guide
to growing number of both official and unofficial English-language i-mode
sites. See our desktop homepage for information on how to access the site from
an i-mode phone.
The sites listed
in the guide are categorized as follows:
·
News
and Sports
·
City
Data (town guides and event listings for Tokyo and elsewhere)
·
Services,
Info (bank information, online dictionaries, etc.)
·
Amusements (games, ring tones and light reading.)
·
Japanese
Links (selected useful information and
services not yet available in English)
6.CHARCTERISTICS
OF i-MODE:
6.1
SCREEN: -
i-mode displays are somewhat larger than
regular cell phones. Some models are monochrome while others display gray scale
or 256 colors. Most models can show small animations (animated GIF’s). The size
ranges from the smallest Screen with 96X108 pixels (D50li) to the largest one
with 120X130 pixels (N502i). This corresponds to anywhere from six to ten lines
of text, at 16 to 20 characters per line.
6.2
SIZE: -
Using
an i-mode phone, you can send and receive e-mail message with up to
250(double-byte) Japanese characters or 500 Latin characters in the body of
your messages, including spaces (total allowed size: 500 bytes). If an email
message is bigger than that, all text after the first 250 characters will be
cut off without warning and cannot be read.
6.3
SPEED: -
i-mode
phones transmit data at a speed of 9.6kbps. Although this sounds slow compared
to ordinary 56kbps computer modems, it is actually Quite satisfactory for
i-mode, since each email is limited to only 500 bytes and most I-modes sites
are relatively lightweight (i.e., made up mostly of text data with very few
graphics, averaging about 1.2k in size). Downloading email and I-mode pages
usually takes only a few seconds.
6.4.
SITES: -
The
most popular i-mode sites are by far entertainment-related sites where you can
download character images and ringing tones, play games, read your horoscope
and find dating services. Other popular services include weather information
and news-related sites.
6.5.
COST: -
Your
bill will depend on how much you use i-mode on your phone, and whether you
choose to sign up for any fee-based i-mode content services.
There
is a basic fee of 300 yen per month to access i-mode service. When you actually
use i-mode to surf websites and send or receive email, you are charged 0.3 yen
per packet (128 bytes) of transferred data (sent as well as received).
According to NTT DoCoMo, the average total bill for I-mode data transmission is
about US$13 per month.
Additionally some I-mode
services charge a monthly fee – usually 100 to 300 yen per month. When you sign
for a fee - based service, you will be informed of the monthly fee before you
are charged.
Your monthly bill will be
combine the costs of your phone calls, packet data transmission fees, and any
monthly fee – based services you’ve signed up for.
6.5.1.SERVICE
OUTLINES: -
With
an i-mode phone, you can easily access and enjoy convenient online services
including balance checking fund transfers from
Your bank account
and retrieval of restaurant/town information, in addition to voice
communications.
i-mode
characteristics:--
1. In addition to
conventional voice communications, users can access a wide range of sites by
simply pressing the i-mode key.
2. The convenient and
useful services lineup includes mobile banking and ticket reservations.
3. i-mode employs
packet data transmission (9600bps), so
communications fees are charged by the amount of time online.
4.
i-mode
is compatible with Internet e-mail and also transfers mail between I-mode
terminals. Packet transmission allows sending and receiving of e-mail at prices
from as low as Y1.
7.i-Mode
Menu sites (Programs):
Use simply key operations for the menu list to access a
range of DoCoMo’s menu sites (programs) for the information you need on the
display on your mobile phone.
Take advantage of
a variety of online.
*Services offered by information providers such as mobile banking
and weather information games etc.,
*Application to information providers may be required for some
sites, such as banking etc.,
*Telephone banking and other sites may include services, which
utilize the ‘Phone to’ feature (dialing charges apply).
*Message Service you can have information such as news flashes
automatically sent to you by registering at the Message Service site.
*I-mode Compatible Sites
Enter a website address using the keys on your mobile phone, and you
can access the Internet and view various websites on the display.
*Please be aware that Internet sites that are most I-mode compatible
may not be displayed properly.
7.1.
i-Mode Mail: -
You can
send e-mail from only Y4 to send mail, approx, Y2 to receive
mail). Your mobile phone number is initially set as your e-mail address. You
can select a new e-mail address by changing the user name before @.
7.2
PHONE TO: -
i-mode- doesn’t just talk on your phone, put it to good use. Look up
phone numbers effortlessly using a wide variety of on-line services, such as
the restaurant guide and TOWNPAGE (NTT telephone directory). Then dial with
just the touch of a button. I-mode mobile phones make “looking up a number and
calling” simple.
Dialing charges apply.
7.3
Mail to: -
If you come across an e-mail address on a site of in the text of a
mail message, just click on display the mail composition screen (mail address
automatically entered), and you’ll be ready to send off a message.
7.4
Web To: -
If you come across an i-mode compatible web site (*1)(URL) starting
with “http://”, use one-touch operations to access the site without entering
the URL manually. (*2)
*1.
Sites constructed with S-JIS characters, GIF images and tags
Supporting i-mode.
*2. Please be aware that Internet sites other than those supporting.
i-mode may not be displayed properly.
*3. Actual screens and URLs may differ from those shown.
8.i-mode stRUCTURE:
Connecting
to sites, receiving the messages and transmitting e-mail are done via the
DoCoMo i-mode center.
9.
SUCCESS OF i-MODE:
In
Japan, i-mode is most popular among young users. The heaviest users of i-mode
are women in their late 20s. The number of i-mode subscribers in Japan went
from 0 to 30 million in 3 years!
There
are a number of reasons that you can attribute the growth of i-mode too. For
one, PC penetration in Japanese homes is not as widespread as in the US and
Europe, so the Japanese don’t use PCs for Internet access as much.
Here
are some other possible reasons:
*The relatively low price of I-mode enabled handsets.
*High mobile phone penetration.
*Relatively low service charges.
*Efficient micro-billing system via the mobile phone bill itself.
*Fashion statements and efficient marketing.
*E-mail remains the killer application as in the initial years of
the Internet’s growth.
10.
NOKIA’S i-MODE ENABLED PHONE i-MODE PHONES:
Features:
A
typical i-mode enabled cellular phone:
*Weigh approximately 90 Gms.
*Has a comparatively large LCD for reading e-mail.
*And a four- point
‘Command navigation’ button.
11.
SOME TECHNICAL-BASICS:
Typically,
networks utilize two types of computers-servers and clients. Servers are the
computers that hold the information. Clients are computers that we view the
information from.
The way the
Internet works is that servers hold our web pages, which we than view from our
PCs, the clients. In the case of i-mode Internet, an Internet server contains
the i-mode web pages. But now, instead of viewing the pages from a PC, we are
using a cellular i-mode phone. These phones are now the clients.
There are
two other factors involved in connecting to a wireless network. In order to
connect a cellular network to a server, a gateway must exist. Also, the website
must be in an i-mode format.
12.
cHTML AND A GATEWAY:
i-Mode
websites are built with cHTML. Since mobile devices have a slower connectivity
speed, cHTML allows i-mode Web pages to download more quickly to mobile devices.
It is extremely similar to HTML- in fact, it is HTML.
CHTML
stands for ‘compact HTML’ and is the content description language used in
i-mode. It is HTML with some additional tags, characters and features.
One
main difference between HTML and chtml is
that some of the more resource-intensive areas of the code such as tables and
frames have been bypassed in the latter. This is to reduce the download time to
mobile devices. So an i-mode enabled website utilizes pages written in cHTML,
and because this language is so similar to HTML, it is easy for Web designers
to create. Since cHTML is an extended subset of HTML you can used your Netscape
or IE browser to look at i-mode pages.
A
gateway is what translates wireless requests from a mobile phone to the server.
It also sends information from a gateway back to the mobile phone.
13.
WORKING:
i-mode
works basically in the same way as any typical HTML browser like Netscape
Navigator or IE does, allowing users to access thousands of I-mode enabled
websites via a WWW address, simply by pushing the cell phone’s dedicated
‘i-mode’ button.
Components required for i-mode services
are:
*An i-mode
cellular phone, i.e., a phone capable of voice and packet transmission along
with a browser installed.
*A packet network.
*An I-mode
server.
*Content in
c-HTML.
In a packet
switched network, data is broken into small units called packets and routed
over the Net. This mode of transmission, where communication is broken into
packets, allows the same data path to be shared among many users in the
network.
cHTML
content needs to pass through a cHTML gateway before users can access it on
their mobile phones using the i-mode browser. When an i-mode compatible
wireless device makes a wireless request, the gateway translates this to the
server and back from the server to the wireless device.
While the
voice system is ‘circuit-switched’, i.e., you need to dial-up; i-mode is
‘packet-switched’. This means that i-mode is ‘always on’, provided you are in
an area where the i-mode signal can reach you. When you select an i-mode item
on handset menu, the data is usually immediately downloaded. There is no delay
for dialing to setup the connection. However, there is a delay for the data to
reach you. This delay is similar to the delay is similar to the delay on your
PC based internet connection after you click on a link, or after you type in an
URL and press the ‘return’ or ‘enter’ button. Of course there are further
delays, if the information you download is too big, or if the network is
overloaded.
The packet
data transmission technology allows for constant connectivity. Therefore users
are not charged for how long they are online, since this time is unlimited.
Rather, they are charged only for the information they retrieve.
Users can
stay online throughout the day and yet not be charged for the time spent
online. This is in contrast to the circuit switched network like the regular
voice telephone network, where the communication path is dedicated to the
callers and blocked to other users for that given period of time.
14.
DIFFERENCES BETWEEN i-MODE AND WAP:
WAP
is a set of specifications for developing Web-like applications that run over
wireless networks. The WAP protocols are analogous to many of those used in
existing Internet technology, yet are optimized for the challenges raised by
small, narrow band client devices such as mobile phones.
|
i-MODE
|
WAP
|
|
Developed by NTT DoCoMo.
|
Developed by wireless phone industry.
|
|
Uses cHTML as markup language.
|
Uses WML as markup language.
|
|
Used only in Japan/Hong Kong at
present
|
Used around the world.
|
15.
COMPETITION OF i-MODE WITH WAP:
WAP
uses a special language called Wireless Markup Language (WML) for communication
between a special protocol conversion device called a WAP Gateway (GW) and
content on the Internet. The WAP GW makes conversions between WML and HTML,
allowing delivery of WAP- based content to a WAP-enabled mobile device.
In
contrast to WAP, i-mode utilizes a packet network for direct communications:
No gateway is needed to the content providers
on the Internet.
It’s
important to keep in mind that WAP is a protocol, while i-mode is a complete
wireless Internet service. It’s not relevant to compare WAP directly with
i-mode. Today it is relevant to compare WAP with cHTML. WAP devices display
only text information whereas i-mode devices display multi-color images.
While WAP and i-mode have technical
differences, they must support the same market for mobile data services.
16.
FUTURE i-MODE:
As
of now, the rate at which data is being transmitted through i-mode is 28.8kbps,
but with DoCoMo going all out to develop the W-CDMA or Wide band- Code Division
Multiple Access technology (a third-generation mobile communication system),
speeds of 384kbps or more could be in the offing. WCDMA allows high-speed data
transmission of video and large-volume data.
Although
i-mode services are at present restricted to Japan Europe ,
the UK Asia and the US
17.
CONCLUSION:
i-mode
phones are very good feature in feature, using i-mode phones we can always
connect internet, The packet data transmission technology allows for constant
connectivity. Therefore users are not charged for how long they are online,
since this time is unlimited.
