KDDI President Expects More Than 1 Million 3G Subscribers By June-End
Thursday June 20, 3:47 am Eastern Time
TOKYO -(Dow Jones)- K DDI Corp. (NasdaqNM: DDIC - News) 's (J.KDD or 9433) President Tadashi Onodera said Thursday he expects the company's "au" third-generation cellphone subscriber base to exceed one million by the end of June.
"I think it'll be more than one million," Onodera said at a regular press conference when asked about the status of June subscriptions to KDDI's " CDMA20001X" 3G cellphone service.
Since KDDI launched the service on its "au" cellphones in April, the company has attracted 695,700 subscribers by the end of May. In contrast, NTT DoCoMo Inc. (DCM or 9437) has drawn only 112,300 subscribers to its 3G service in its seven months of operation.
KDDI's competitively priced 3G handsets, their longer battery life and the compatibility of the 3G service with KDDI's current-generation "CDMAOne" service have helped boost the number of 3G subscribers in the past two and a half months.
"I think we can achieve my target of seven million subscribers by the end of next March," Onodera said.
Onodera also said he has no plans now to offer a wireless local area network ( LAN) service, mainly because of the various technological standards available.
"The standard is the problem. Which standard, and the timing, are difficult," he said.
Separately, KDDI said it will discontinue the "PDC" service on its "au" cellphones on March 31, 2002 , as a way to migrate those subscribers to its "au" cellphones that use CDMA (code division multiple access) technology. KDDI said a sharp fall in subscribers to its PDC-type "au" cellphones was another reason for the discontinuation.
To facilitate migration to CDMA-type "au" cellphones, which supersede the PDC service, KDDI will also offer special prices for most of its CDMA-type "au" handsets.
KDDI also said it will further open up its "EZweb" mobile Internet service from July 1 , in particular the billing service it offers for contents providers.
Until now, KDDI has provided billing services for official "EZweb" sites and conducted a complex assessment of companies seeking to set up official "EZweb" sites.
But from July 1 it will offer billing services to a wider range of content providers, simplify assessment of them and strengthen its monitoring of web sites.
KDDI shares ended up 1.4% at Y357,000 on the Tokyo Stock Exchange Thursday, while the benchmark Nikkei 225 Stock Average closed up 1.3%.
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