DoCoMo Counts on Services to Fuel Demand for High Speed Phones
--From AOL.-- Cooters
Hong Kong, Dec. 8 (Bloomberg) -- NTT DoCoMo Inc., a pioneer in developing mobile Internet services, expects most of the revenue from high-speed mobile phones to come from everyday users, not the business customers envisioned by some rivals.
Keiichi Enoki, the DoCoMo director who led development of the company's i-mode service, sees ``high potential'' for so-called third-generation, or 3G, services that target consumers willing to spend money to download video clippings of movies, music and news lasting about 10 seconds.
``With 3G, we will be offering services like convenience stores would offer,'' Enoki said. ``That means that while consumers don't make big purchases like they would in a department store, they will become frequent visitors.''
Even though 3G services promise much greater bandwidth -- allowing users to send a larger amount of data -- Enoki doesn't expect services such as video streaming to be popular among users sensitive about price. That's because such services will require being hooked up to the phone for longer periods.
Japan's largest cellular phone company is expected to be the world's first operator to start third-generation services. The new service will allow users to send data at 384 kilobits per second, compared with 9.6 kilobits per second allowed on the current technology.
The company started i-mode last February. I-mode allows users to download music, cartoons, make bank transfers, look for jobs and send e-mail.
Tokyo-based DoCoMo, which hasn't announced pricing for the high-speed services, has seen per user revenue for i-mode double in the past year.
Beginning next year, NTT DoCoMo plans to spend $10 billion over three years to complete a nationwide network for the high speed services.
Dec/08/2000 5:24 ET |
