NTT DoCoMo to launch push-service for new phones

NTT DoCoMo will launch a service to push selected information to subscribers’ mobile phones in an attempt to get some extra revenue from users who don’t frequently access its I-mode wireless Internet service, the company said Tuesday.

Called I-Channel, the service will be launched later this month, along with three handsets compatible with the service. For a basic monthly fee of ¥150 ($1.34), users will receive weather information, news, sports news, horoscopes and entertainment reports on their phones.

The five DoCoMo channels will be updated every two hours. The carrier is also publishing the I-Channel specification so that third-party content providers can offer their own channels.

“It’s for customers who are not using I-mode even though they have a state-of-the-art phone,” Takeshi Natsuno, NTT DoCoMo’s senior vice president of multimedia services, said of I-Channel at a Tokyo news conference.

“These customers are willing to use [I-mode] to check the weather and check stock quotes, but they don’t really know how to do this,” he said. Thus I-Channel will bring some of the most popular information from I-mode directly to handsets without the user having to do anything, Natsuno said. Users can click to explore subjects further and then start paying charges based on the amount of data transmitted and received.

NTT DoCoMo is facing a gradual decline in the average amount of money it collects from subscribers every month and needs services such as I-Channel to arrest this trend. Users of the 3G service spent on average ¥9,650 per month during its last fiscal year, the 12 months to the end of March 2005. NTT DoCoMo estimates this spending will fall to ¥8,550 for the current fiscal year.

NTT DoCoMo is thinking about taking the service overseas to its I-mode partners but doesn’t have any specific schedule and hasn’t started talks yet, Natsuno said in an interview.

“The priority for I-mode in Europe is to get high-end customers to use I-mode, not low-end customers,” Natsuno said.

The carrier also announced three handsets Tuesday that are compatible with the service. The handsets, which will be available later this month, include the P701iD from Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. (Panasonic), D701i from Mitsubishi Electric and N701i from NEC.