According to company sources quoted by Reuters, Vodafone is planning to upgrade its mPortal Vizzavi to meet the threat from i-mode head-on. Vodafone hopes to make Vizzavi faster and more visual, and also plans to increase its range of content.
KPN and NTT DoCoMo are currently rolling out i-mode services in Germany and the Netherlands. The service has proved highly successful in Japan, where the huge majority of DoCoMo subscribers use i-mode applications.
DoCoMo owns the rights to i-mode and has exclusively licensed them to KPN and H3G in Europe. However, there is little to stop Vodafone copying elements of the service to make its own offering more attractive.
