NTT DoCoMo's Profits Soar
Todd Jatras, Forbes.com, 11.14.00, 2:37 PM ET
NEW YORK - NTT DoCoMo released first-half earnings today that showed a 22.2% rise in profits over the year-earlier period. The company said net consolidated profits came in at $2.02 billion, compared to $1.65 billion a year ago, and subscribers to its I-mode mobile Internet service had reached 12.65 million, compared to just 1.73 million a year ago.
Such dynamic growth in Japan, while not wholly unexpected, bodes well for global adoption of the I-mode platform, which is a direct competitor to the popular wireless application protocol (WAP) used in Scandinavia and the United States. I-mode relies on a compact form of Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) to format Web pages viewed on a wireless device, as opposed to the more complex Extensible Markup Language-based (XML) format used by WAP devices.
Keiji Tachikawa, president of DoCoMo, said at a press conference in Tokyo, "The mobile phone market has been buoyant so far this year, and I expect this to continue in the second half." He predicted that I-mode's subscriber base would reach 20 million subscribers in Japan by the end of the second half, ending March 31, 2001.
Japan's leading wireless carrier, which is a subsidiary of Nippon Telegraph and Telephone (nyse: NTT), has already signed deals with America Online (nyse: AOL) and Sony (nyse: SNE) that significantly raises I-mode's global visibility.
In September, DoCoMo agreed to take a 42.3% stake in AOL Japan and promote it as its preferred Internet service provider and also offer AOL mail and AOL Internet Messenger to I-mode users. Last August, the company signed a deal with Sony to develop hardware and applications that would give gamers the ability to log on to I-mode through their PlayStation units. That service is expected to become available next month.
DoCoMo also reported that it spent about $560 million on development of its third-generation (3G) wireless network in the first half and will spend an additional $930 million in the second half. Tachikawa said the company will begin rolling out the 3G network on a limited scale in Japan next May.
Tachikawa also indicated that DoCoMo is actively seeking foreign partners to help establish a worldwide 3G network. It only follows that I-mode will lead the way in those efforts.
forbes.com
BTW: Mars, I liked your old format of posting earnings. The headlines were easy to read and scan over those not of interest.
Jack |
