This piece of news was expected ;)))) I'm smiling because of an anecdote I hadn't disclosed yet.
On my recent trip to Japan with i-Club Edit (the European and Australian association of i-mode service providers - thanks again Pascal & Pierre for organizing it), we went on a visit to DoCoMo. Very nice and impressive welcome with interpreters, gifts, english slides... in their huge skyscraper.
M. Yoshiteru Yamaguchi, Executive Director of Content & Customer Relations Department, delivered the presentation; at some point we all started laughing: not very polite in a Japanese context... Well, prices on the slides were in POUND STERLING (£). i-mode had no business in the UK, and the world trades more often in dollards ($) and euros (€) right ? Something was going on in the UK, imminently, and we all knew it really could only be an O2 deal... There you go, 3 weeks later, it's public, for instance in this Register article.
If you don't know O2, you should. Hugh Griffiths and his team are doing a great job: I understand they report the largest share of data ARPU for mobile operators (over 22%). It used to be BT's mobile division until it was spined off. They brought to market a great desktop client (piece of software) called O2 active, powered by SurfKitchen. They offer also great PDA phones such as the XDAII. They advertise 'happy hours' for SMS, ie free in the evening between 5 and 7 I think. etc.
So expanding their reach now from 3m subs to over 13m subs using the same i-mode technology should give them a real boost, and help them tap into all the community building services for i-mode... Expect their market share to increase due to increased innovation on the market.
