Before there was the Android Market, there was iMode; a Founder Reflects
Posted 23:44 EST on 12NOV2013 by: indie navi news staff in news » docomo, dwango, imode, nobuo kawakami, shigetaka kurita
In comparison to North America and Europe, the roll-out and subsequent popularity of smart phones was late in Japan. One of the reasons often cited is how ahead of their time cellular phones in Japan were even before the term “smart phone” began to be bandied about. When the rest of the world was making due with simple messaging services, Japanese cell phones could be used to store music, to take high-quality digital photos, and, yes, even to surf the Web.
Given the limitations at the time, the Web presentation these keitai were capable of was limited. As a solution, each of the predominate carriers in Japan came up with their own stripped-down markup and protocols, but far and away the most popular of these was NTT’s iMode. Giving NTT only a 9% cut of profits (in contrast to the 30% currently asked for by Google and Apple), content providers could create iMode-compatible content and have it featured in NTT’s iMode marketplace. Content included specially tailored Web sites, small software that would now be called “applications” and, of course, games.
Shigetaka Kurita was one of the original handful of members involved in iMode’s creation, and is the man commonly attributed with establishing the paradigm of support of visual emoticons that have become a texting staple the world around. In an interview with 4Gamer.net, Kurita looks back on the genesis of the iMode service.
- Kurita started out working as a salesperson in the the Chiba branch of the Docomo Shop, NTT’s sales front for its cellular phones. He got the job developing iMode by responding to an internal job posting.
- In the beginning, NTT’s higher-ups were a bit skeptical of the service’s chances for success, so that the iMode team was largely left to their own devices. Kurita describes the early atmosphere as being “…like a venture start-up”.
- Kurita credits his time selling pagers “to high school girls” as a primary motive in developing graphical emoticons. He recalls how when NTT’s pagers dropped a feature allowing the code “88″ to be displayed as a heart, high school girls immediately responded by switching to other providers.
- When developing graphical emoticons, Kurita farmed out some of the work to architects. In Japan, architects are also often tasked with developing signs and business nameplates, so they were the professionals on hand with the most relevant skill set at the time.
- Joining in the interview was also Nobuo Kawakami, the founder of Dwango, which is best known for its Nico Nico Douga Web video service. Kawakami and Kurita together recall the prevailing attitude for large companies to shrug their shoulders and drop the development of departments supporting iMode (and its competing protocols) into the laps of middle-managers with middle-of-the-road work histories. No one expected iMode to be the success would go on to become.
- Kurita and Kawakami also discuss the often-unacknowledged role services like iMode played in establishing paid digital content marketplaces. Although there’s a tendency to think Google and Apple introduced these services, if anything the two tech giants have been a disruptive force in Japan, where paid digital content marketplaces were already in popular use.
- Prophetically, Kurita discusses how, in circumventing iMode and providing free services, companies like Gree and Mobage were able to get their start, at the cost of spreading the expectation that content should be free of charge. Kurita sees the same trend beginning to unfold in the Android and iOS marketplaces.
With the rise of smart phones, services like iMode have fallen to the wayside (although iMode does continue to enjoy popularity in Japan), but it’s important to recognize these services’ role as the link between the bricks of days past and today’s smart phones.
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