Will i-Mode products be enhanced/modified in the near future?
Yes. Recently, NTT DoCoMo has begun to offer English content on its i-Mode phones to offer guidance to foreigners currently living in Japan. Also, to further enhance the i-Mode platform, NTT DoCoMo and Sun Microsystems announced an alliance on March 16, 2000. The plan is to incorporate Sun’s Java, Jini and Java Card technologies into i-Mode cellular phones, hopefully by next year. As the world’s first cellular phones equipped with such technologies, these devices will enable i-Mode users to access a variety of additional applications. Such applications include enhanced banking service security, game software downloads and software updates. The first Java virtual machine enabled phones from DoCoMo will debut in fall 2000. In addition, Internet cruising speeds using i-Mode technology are supposed to get a lot faster when Japan becomes the first country in the world to roll out 3G, wide-band CDMA. Current speeds are set at a maximum of 9.6 Kbps. More than 300-Kbps should be possible by ne
