Monty's Gaming and Wireless Outlook - Issue 175

For those who follow football and let's be honest you have to be completely bonkers not to, the manager-furore about the amount of games played and lack of preparation over the holiday period seems feed-of-chicken compared to the feats of ex-basketball genius Dennis Rodman.

Rodman, currently appearing in the panto otherwise known as Celebrity Big Brother, prepared for the 1998 NBA finals by missing training to take part in a wrestling match with Hulk Hogan in Detroit where, inter alia, somebody broke a chair over his head in the ring. You know the rest. Rodman returned and ensured victory for his Chicago Bulls team by sinking two free throws in the last minute of the game.

Some people can do things like that for a while, but it always ends in tears. Disgraced Liberal Democrats leader Charles Kennedy managed to be the head of a major political party while boozing like George Best, and shock horror, it is even alleged that some executives in the mobile industry win deals while under the influence of more than a gin and tonic.

But such behaviour always comes to an ignimonious end. Rodman has transmuted into Widow Twankee, Kennedy faces a future without any lucrative non-exec sinecures and the mobile executives are living on borrowed time. So, in the Month-Of-Detox, it's perhaps time to doff one's hat a company that doesn't do things to excess, but leads the way by sober and rational decision-making.

NTT DoCoMo sounds like a text message gone wrong, but this Japanese company's success in bringing the i-mode mobile internet serivce to its customers proved to European and US markets there was a market beyond SMS and voice. Subscriber figures are now more than 45 million and its recent expansion into Europe means future growth is guaranteed.

While some have been surprised at i-mode's belated emergence in Europe, DoCoMo's softly-softly strategy may prove to be correct. Recent launches on O2 in the UK and Ireland are bridgeheads that presage further assaults and it will be interesting to see how Vodafone reacts bearing in mind the success of its Vodafone Live! service. Will they drop their prices to nip this new bud?

Mmm, probably not. The problem with i-mode in Europe is the handsets that come with it. Europeans are happy with their Nokias and Sharps and Sony Ericssons, and who really wants a NEC handset? But, loookkk beehhhinnnd yyyoooouu, European operators. There was once a time in the US when LG handsets were dismissed as niche handsets, but LG is now the second best-selling handset in the US.

All of which won't bother Dennis Rodman in the slightest. For a man who once told the press he was about to marry a beautiful, intelligent woman and who turned up the next day in a horse-drawn carriage wearing a wedding dress and a wig and claiming he was marrying himself, such opinions are worthless.

Genius. Maybe we need the nutters more than we admit.