Naturally, this business model is also being applied for to be patented. Entertainment media companies offer melodies, wallpapers, idol photos, and games. Financial institutions offer online banking, stock quotes, and trading. Information providers offer news, navigation, and listings for jobs, restaurants, apartments, movies, and horse races. Ticketing services offer reservations for concerts, sports events, trains, planes, and rental cars.
Shopping sites offer the usual online fare of books, CDs, games, and video.
Transactions other than subscription fees are not handled by the carriers' billing services, and users must still rely on credit cards or other traditional payment methods. And if the over 10,000 and growing unofficial i-mode sites start offering for free the same kind of contents as the official pay sites, the pay sites may have to start considering other revenue models besides subscription fees. The advertising revenue model which has flourished on the PC-based Internet will be more difficult on the tiny screen. Nevertheless, in Japan no virgin space on which an ad can be placed goes wasted. DoCoMo and Japan's largest ad agency Dentsu formed a joint venture called D2 Communications to test the effectiveness of mobile ads.