Sharp expects its total handset shipments, to grow 18 percent year-on-year to 13 million units in 2006, with 3G-enabled models accounting for 50 percent of shipments, said Noboru Hanioka, head of Sharp’s overseas telecom marketing division. By 2008, Sharp’s overall handset shipments should reach 20 million units, Hanioka predicted.
According to leaks around the web, Fujitsu-Siemens will unveil a high-end smartphone loaded with features at 3GSM in March. The T800 [ .jpg image ] will roll-out a QWERTY keyboard with a 240×240 display, rumored to be running Windows Mobile 5.0 Phone Edition on a 416 MHz XScale processor. Also predicted 64 MB of RAM and 128 MB of Flash ROM for storage the new unit will supposedly offer Wi-Fi (802.11b/g) and Bluetooth 2.0 as well.
Vodafone have just released their December net adds: 63,700, showing a strong 3G gain of 236,800 and a to-be-expected 2G loss of 173,100. This indicates the carrier gained at least some new 3G customers from other carriers if we assume all Vodafone 2G customers who upgraded to 3G stayed with the carrier. Vodafone KK subscribers are now, overall, trending up, if still slowly.
In the 1997 movie Titanic, Thomas Andrews, the ship’s designer, states: “From this moment, no matter what we do, Titanic will founder… It is a mathematical certainty.” In the same light, it’s interesting to note today’s news from NTT DoCoMo, stating the carrier surpassed 20 million 3G FOMA subscribers on 29 December 2005. If we assume the same rate of growth this month, and compare to KDDI’s presumed rate of growth in December and January, we can make a pretty good guess as to when Big D will grab 3G lead. More importantly, what does this mean for the market?
(Excerpt from full article) We can also expect January to be a good month for phone sales — for all carriers — due to a rather significant practice in Japanese culture: o-toshidama. This is the practice of giving gifts of money to children and teens. The money is usually given in little decorative envelopes, and according to 1999 data from the Kumon Children’s Research Institute, an average child received around 40,000 yen (I guess it’s more now). Most significantly: “Most save the money, [but] others spend it on relatively expensive computer games, clothes, and CDs.” And phones, we suspect.
NTT DoCoMo just announced that the number of subscribers to their 3G FOMA service surpassed the 20 million mark on December 29, 2005, a little over four years since the service’s launch on October 1, 2001. DoCoMo attributes the rapid subscriber growth to its expanding range of 3G handsets, including new 902i FOMA models equipped for PushTalk walkie-talkie-style communication, ToruCa information download services and i-channel automatic telop-style information updates. The company expects FOMA subscriptions to reach 23.5 million by the end of March 2006.
At the end of last year, a group of procurement officials from NTT DoCoMo visited China to inspect Nokia’s mobile phone plant. The visit, ahead of the launch in February of the Finnish group’s handsets bearing the DoCoMo logo, was designed to reassure the Japanese carrier that Nokia’s facilities were up to its demanding standards. DoCoMo cancelled its initial contract and scaled back its procurement from Nokia when the launch was delayed due to the difficulty of installing i-mode, according to one official.
