E-Plus cancels i-mode - finally

German telecom provider E-Plus has announced that they shut down their i-mode services on 2008-04-01.

I congratulate E-Plus to their correct decision. I didn't like i-mode from its first day. i-mode was started in Germany by E-Plus in 2002. That is 4 years after XML and 3 years after XHTML Basic have become recommendations at the W3C. While XML and XHTML Basic are open standards, i-mode is proprietary standards. XHTML Basic is based on XML and thus modern, interoperable and thus generatable and processible with standard tools. I-mode because of its proprietary nature and because it is not based on XML requires special software to process.

Otoh why do we need special mobile services? I do not see a reason for them. I of course do see a reason for mobility services that bring us one step closer to an augmented reality. And of course I would like to find the next computer shop, gas station, supermarket or restaurant nearby wherever I am. But I would like these services without vendor lock. I want to be able to use them independently of whether I'm currently using my Motorola RAZR V6 maxx or my laptop or a desktop PC.

So congrats E-Plus and thanks! Finally you've dumped i-mode to where it belongs.

About

About Cher

Cher is a computer hacker that actively contributes to open source software and also runs some of his own projects as open source.

Cher's homepage is ↗http://www.riedquat.de/.

About E-Plus

E-Plus is a German telecom provider.

The current homepage of E-Plus is ↗http://www.e-plus.de/.

About i-mode

i-mode is a proprietary mobile content technology.

The current homepage of i-mode is ↗http://www.nttdocomo.com/corebiz/services/imode/index.html.