eBay goes mobile with i-Mode

Once eBay has sucked you in, it becomes a 24-hour a day habit. Fortunately for O2 users, they can now satisfy their cravings from anywhere via the i-Mode service.

Available since yesterday, the service provides a mobile version of the site that apes most of the features from the regular internet site – you can bid, search for bargains and keep track of your wheeling and dealing via the ‘My eBay’ section.

The only thing you can’t do is pay for your catches with your mobile – you’ll still have to head back to a PC to shell out via PayPal, or pay offline.

You’ll need to have an existing eBay account to use the service and, of course, an O2 phone that features i-Mode – good bets are the NEC 343i (available for £50 on PAYG) or Samsung S500i (free on contract).

With the addition of eBay, the UK’s i-Mode service has built a reasonable mix of 126 compatible sites, which include Monster.com, Egg and Universal. The service still has a long way to go before it matches its success in Japan, though, where there are a whopping 90,000 sites available.

The only drawback to extended use of all the sites is the pricing – browsing and downloading costs £3 per megabyte of data, which comes on top of any extra membership fees from the sites themselves.

For more info and a full list of compatible phones, click on this link (it’s a Flash site).