NTT DoCoMo's Jan 3G Cellphone Subscriber Growth Sluggish
Friday February 7, 4:14 am ET
TOKYO -(Dow Jones)- NTT DoCoMo Inc. (DCM or 9437) said Friday it signed up a net 2,600 subscribers in January to its third-generation mobile phone service, indicating sluggish growth despite the release of two new handsets late that month.
The monthly figure is the service's second lowest.
Since DoCoMo launched its "FOMA" 3G service in October 2001, only 154,600 customers had signed up for the service as of the end of January. The low popularity is due mainly to geographically limited service coverage and bulky and expensive handsets that have short battery lives.
Aiming to make its 3G handsets more attractive, NTT DoCoMo recently released two new handset models that are lighter, cheaper and have longer battery lives. But, DoCoMo's January data suggest sales of those handsets have been slow.
DoCoMo, however, downplayed any concerns over slow subscriber growth in its 3G service, saying sales of the two new handsets have been brisk.
"17,000 units of the two new 3G handsets have been sold since their launch" through Feb. 4, said a DoCoMo spokeswoman. Changeover to new handsets contributed to keeping the net monthly figure for new subscribers low, the company said.
DoCoMo began selling Fujitsu Ltd.'s (J.FUT or 6702) "F2051" model on Jan. 18 and NEC Corp.'s (NIPNY or 6701) "N2051" 3G model on Jan. 23.
In January, DoCoMo added 159,000 cellphone subscribers, giving it an accumulative total of 43.03 million users.
Japan's dominant cellular operator added 360,000 subscribers to its "i-mode" mobile Internet service, bringing the i-mode subscriber base to 36.57 million.
But DoCoMo lost 30,000 subscribers to its personal handyphone system, or PHS, service. The service had an accumulative total of 1.73 million subscribers.
biz.yahoo.com
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