NTT DoCoMo said on Thursday it expected the number of users of its high-speed 3G mobile phones to grow more than 15-fold to 25 million by 2006, helped by improved handsets and wider coverage. The two-year old service has just past the 1.6 million subscriber mark and now looks primed for huge growth in 2004.
NTT DoCoMo, Inc. announced today that beginning December 6, 2003, the service area for DoCoMo’s FOMA 3G mobile phones will cover 99.4% of the population in the Kanto-Koshinetsu region. Its eight regional subsidiaries will also expand FOMA service to an area encompassing approximately 98% of the nationwide population by the end of December. DoCoMo will continue to enlarge its FOMA service area, targeting 99% coverage of Japan’s population by the end of March 2004.
NTT DoCoMo, Japan’s top mobile operator, aims to offer 3G handsets that run on the Linux-based operating system as early as the second half of 2004, according to a source close to the firm. NEC Corp, one of the core handset suppliers for DoCoMo, said it aimed to offer Linux-based handsets by the end of 2004.
Vodafone KK has renewed the design and concept of its outlets called Vodafone Shops. Now that its “Sha-mail” service lost its overwhelming power to attract customers, the company is poised to start new mobile information distribution services. The company had a bitter experience in losing subscribers after it reduced the number of the types of the handsets used for its service. handsets. Also see WWJ articles on this from Oct. 8th and Nov. 21st.
NTT DoCoMo, Inc. reported that Wind Telecomunicazioni S.p.A. announced the release of DoCoMo’s i-mode service to the Italian market today. Italy marks the eighth market for i-mode service, which is already available in Japan, Germany, the Netherlands, Taiwan, Belgium, France, and Spain. Wind is Italy’s third largest mobile telecom company, with approximately 10 million subscribers.
Japan Telecom Holdings owned two-thirds by Britain’s Vodafone Group said on Tuesday that half-year operating profit fell 12 percent due to the hefty cost of building up its 3G network. Its wireless unit, Vodafone KK, known as J-Phone until September, scrambled to expand the area coverage of its high-speed 3G network this year in a bid to catch up with NTT DoCoMo Inc. and KDDI Corp.
