France's brand new baby i-mode. (Upfront).

In November, France's Bouygues Telecom (more than 6.6 million subscribers) saw the safe arrival of a bouncing new baby i-mode, complete with about 85 content providers and two handsets (NEC and Toshiba). Judging from the Web site, the look and feel of i-mode in France approximates that of i-mode on KPN, E-Plus, Base and, of course, DoCoMo. But while the media has been filled with reports of DoCoMo's massive writedown of overseas investments, a search on the Web turned up not a whiff of news related to Bouygues' i-mode launch.

J@pan Inc spoke with Brice Auckenthaler, a France-based mobile industry watcher and consultant. He said that i-mode's presence in Europe is very significant and agreed that it will increase when data roaming is achieved between the various baby i-modes.

David Macdonald, executive for i-mode strategy at DoCoMo i-mode Europe, said that Bouygues has closely followed the same i-mode model that gave NIT DoCoMo overwhelming success in Japan, although content, marketing and services have been localized for the French market. "It is all very similar to the Netherlands, Germany and Japan -- but the key is now it is done by the French," he added.

It's starting to seem that while DoCoMo has been defeated in the realm of network technology (W-CDMA), it will enjoy modest success with 2G-implemented i-mode itself. Unfortunately, cellphone companies still live or die by voice revenues, not data, and some partners are looking weaker every day.