DoCoMo will seek to revitalise lacklustre sales of its FOMA service with the launch of three new handsets. From next month DoCoMo will start receiving an estimated 6m 3G handsets from NEC, Panasonic and Fujitsu in a bid to increase its 3G customer base to 10.6m. In conjunction with the new handsets, DoCoMo has earmarked Y120bn ($1.1bn) of tariff cuts during the current financial year.
In an intervew with Nikkei BP, NTT DoCoMo’s new president Masao Nakamura has said he has three major goals; increase 3G FOMA subscribers, dig out new revenue sources such as mobile e-commerce and enhance customer satisfaction. After posting its highest ever operating profit of 1, 103 billion yen in the year to March 2004, it certainly looks as if Nakamura has his work cut out for him, especially as — on the surface of it at least — KDDI au seems to have consistently knocked the socks off DoCoMo in terms of gleaning 3G subs.
Japan’s mobile phone shipments for fiscal 2003 approached the record high. The Japan Electronics and Information Technology Industries Association (JEITA) has announced that the total number of shipments for fiscal year 2004 (Apr. ’03 to Mar. ’04) reached 49,843,000 units, following two years of consecutive growth.
Vodafone K.K. today said it plans an extensive series of upgrades to its 3G network so that the Vodafone group’s Japanese outpost will have 99.6% population coverage by the end of May. This begs the question, where are the new terminals that are needed to really pull in the subscribers?
Toshiba Corporation today announced its latest strategic roadmaps for the memory market, which reflect the company’s continued focus on the rapidly-growing file storage market, the mobile electronics memory market, and high-performance solutions for networking and digital consumer applications. This market segmentation enables Toshiba to respond rapidly to customer requirements and develop advanced memory solutions to meet their needs. Toshiba’s current line-up of memory products serving these three market segments includes NAND Flash, high-density NOR Flash, low-power SRAMs, Pseudo SRAMs (PSRAMs) and advanced Multi-Chip Packages (MCP) which integrate various memory technologies into a single package; and for the networking and extreme performance digital consumer market, Network Fast-Cycle RAMs (Network FCRAMs(TM)) and XDR(TM) DRAM.
After the May 7 release of NTT DoCoMo’s full-year FY 2003 financial results, Tokyo analysts, financial consultants, and investment gurus have been churning out a steady stream of opinion and forecasts. After reporting stunning net profits of Y650 bn (about US$5.71 bn), at least some analysts predict the company is on track to return to the Y1-trillion operating profit level in FY 2004, ending 31 March 2005 (have any outside Japan achieved similar?). Among the more interesting gems: 2G average revenue per user (ARPU) was Y7,470 (Y5,570 voice, Y1,900 data; data was 25% of total) in 4Q2004, while 3G ARPU was Y10,360 (Y6,960 voice, Y3,400; data was 33% of total) for the same period. Clearly, 3G rocks! But that’s not all — read on for the predictions on how new, flat-rate data pricing will affect profits in FY2004.
