NTT DoCoMo's i-mode won by billing content on the phone bill

Mid-1990s Japan had WAP-style mobile internet as a technology demo: protocols without content and without payments. NTT DoCoMo's i-mode team — including content chief Mari Matsunaga, a magazine editor by training — concluded the problem was content and commerce, not transmission. The service launched on 22 February 1999 with 67 officially curated content partners, chosen the way magazines pick features, on a portal called iメニュー.

The plumbing made it work. i-mode used a compact subset of HTML (cHTML) and published the specification, so thousands of developers could write content; official partners got listed on the portal and charged users through the phone bill — a four-digit PIN and done — with DoCoMo keeping about 9% (versus later app stores' 25–30%). Average content fees ran about ¥300 a month; Bandai's single paid game passed 1 million subscribers by March 2000.

The numbers revealed the curve: 1 million users by 8 August 1999, 10 million by 6 August 2000, 30 million by 25 December 2001, 40 million contracts by 30 October 2003, and Guinness recognition in 2006 as the world's largest wireless internet service (45.7 million). i-mode ARPU doubled from ¥880 to ¥1,540 (FY2000→FY2001) while voice ARPU fell, and by end-2000 DoCoMo was Japan's most valuable company by market cap — ahead of its own parent NTT.