The company will initially roll out the service in Germany, Belgium, Italy and the Netherlands and is expected to expand its i-mode service in the potentially lucrative Asian markets such as South Korea, Taiwan and Hong Kong sometime next year as well. At the same time, they are cautious about potential hurdles that the i-mode model will face in Europe. Several challenges await DoCoMo and its European partners when the service makes its debut in Europe. European consumers tend to be more cost conscious than Japan's mobile subscribers, who are used to paying high prices for their mobile telephone airtime. Internet usage in Europe is far more PC-centric than in Japan.
European homes are generally larger and have sufficient space to house a computer.
Thus, there are fewer incentives for Europeans to look for alternative online access. Finally, part of the reason why i-mode has been so successful in Japan is due to its close working relationship with local handset makers. The handset market in Europe is quite different and NTT DoCoMo will likely have to struggle in this new arena where handset makers actually have the upper hand. It would be a mistake to expect that Europeans will embrace mobile internet services like i-mode the same way as the Japanese have. The European version of i-mode should find limited success perhaps in the business segment, but the consumer market may indeed be a much harder sell.