i-Channel service in Japan now has more than 15 million users

Alessandro posted a link to the news about DoCoMo passing the 15 million mile mark in terms of current user base in Japan (over at ME Mag).

“The milestone comes just nine months after it passed the 10 million subscriber mark. i-channel was launched in September 2005 as a push service that sends scrolling-text headlines to a phone’s standby screen. It comprises five information channels: weather, news, sports & entertainment, horoscopes and recommended i-mode sites. DoCoMo phones feature an i-channel hard button that links straight to the service�

Thoughts

FlashCast was first introduced to the Japanese market first (at least 2 years ago it seems) … I know that VZW (Verizon Wireless) was looking at it last year.

In fact, I attended the Flash Cast session at MAX last year, where they talked about what they were planning (I believe it was called “Dash” or “Dash Client” (if memory serves me correctly) which was some sort of custom Flash Cast client for their planned rollout). Anyways, without going into a lot of detail, it was interesting to see how it potentially fit into their service offerings.

If you are interested in Flash Cast you can check out DoCoMo’s page on their ichannel service deployed through Flash Cast.

You can also take a look at the Flash Cast data sheet, and there is a FAQ publicly available.

FlashCast now Flast -space- Cast?

Also … not to nit pick, but I noticed the Adobe Mobile Team changed FlashCast to be two words: Flash Cast in their product marketing literature. Officially, I guess it’s: Adobe® Flash® Cast™. I only mention it for search purposes.
Flash Home

Some of Flash Home was shown at MAX 2007 last year. Basically, this is another native mobile client that allows delivery of custom dynamic “Home Screens” (customizable and dynamic user interfaces). To me, it seems to be a repurposed Flash Cast client; which would make sense …

You can check out the product data sheet on Flash Home.

I have not heard of any public deployments from Adobe Mobile Team in terms of Flash Home (but it’s still early here in 2008).

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 10th, 2008 at 4:25 am and is filed under Flash Lite. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.