The current issue of Hong Kong youth culture consumer magazine East Touch did a huge cover infommercial on the Hutchsion launch of I-mode in Hong Kong.

Hong Kongnese’ worship of Japanese culture is understandable, but why border with I-mode (something that’s last gen.) when we are in the age of XHTML (aka WAP 2.0 – the non-gateway mobile internet), iPhone, and turly content-rich open Mobile Web?

At the same time, Hutch is also pushing “open-garden” in Europe so I am not sure what’s going on there.

Take a quick look of the the Hutch Hong Kong I-mode Web Site you will see boring handsets. If you thought I-mode means bringing bleeding edge Japanese handset to the Hong Kong market, then prepared to be disappoint. Sorry, no super cool handsets for you Hong Kong Hipsters. 🙂