Mobile phone giant Vodafone has reported the first ever drop in customers at its Japanese business, Vodafone KK. Net subscribers fell by 3,100 in July, the first such loss reported by one of Japan’s three main operators.
NTT DoCoMo released their first quarter earnings for fiscal year ending March 31, 2005 yesterday. Net income fell to 170.4 billion yen, or $1.53 billion yen, in the three months that ended June 30, from 196.8 billion yen a year earlier. Sales fell 2.5 percent, to 1.22 trillion yen. Despite adding 1.5 million new 3G subscribers they announced a 13% drop in profits over the same period last year. “Our subscriber growth is solid,” Masayuki Hirata, DoCoMo’s senior executive vice president, said at a news conference, “but many of our current initiatives are essentially price cuts, and the migration of customers to FOMA means related costs are increasing.” According to the figures, overall revenue per subscriber dropped from 8,060 yen to 7,400 yen.
Japan’s second largest mobile carrier KDDI Corp. said today that its quarterly net profit rose on strong demand for its mobile services. Consolidated net profit for the April-June first quarter was 51.66 billion yen ($462.4 million), up 17.6 percent from 43.9 billion yen a year ago. Vodafone reported a 6 percent loss for the same quarter on Monday. DoCoMo reports tomorrow.
NTT DoCoMo, Inc. announced today that the company entered into a financing agreement with multimedia retail company GEO as part of a strategy to promote i-mode FeliCa service in the Japanese market. Under the agreement, NTT DoCoMo will provide financial assistance for the development of a network system to support i-mode FeliCa service at GEO outlets, and the installation of smart-card reader/writers at approximately 600 GEO shops beginning this November. In order to recoup its investment in the system, DoCoMo will collect a commission for each usage of the FeliCa service. GEO is a major player in the rental and sales of videos, DVDs, CDs and game software.
Vodafone K.K. announced today that it will offer a new automatic image size conversion function starting September 1, 2004 to make exchanging Sha-mail picture messages among Vodafone customers even more convenient. Currently, various file sizes and formats exist for exchanging images on mobile handsets, and not every handset can automatically receive multiple image formats and file sizes. Using the new automatic image size conversion function in the Vodafone K.K. network mail system, the attached image’s file size and number of colors are automatically converted when a Sha-mail is sent to another Vodafone customer *1, thereby making it possible for the sender to send a picture message without worrying about the receiver’s handset type.
Vodafone Holdings today said its 1QFY04 consolidated operating revenue plunged 21.4 percent compared with the same quarter last year; the figure feel to 356.0 billion yen due mainly to the exclusion of the fixed-line telecommunication business in the second half of fiscal 2003. Total revenue for the mobile business declined by 6 percent compared to the same quarter last year.
