of minor interest:
DoCoMo expects 3G subscriber boom
By Michiyo Nakamoto in Tokyo
Published: April 30 2003 20:51 | Last Updated: April 30 2003 20:51
NTT DoCoMo's third-generation mobile phone service faces a turning point this year, with subscriber numbers expected to exceed 1m, according to a senior DoCoMo official.
"Our plan is to exceed 1m subscribers and our experience in the past has been that, when subscriber numbers exceed 1m, there is a multiplier effect", Shiro Tsuda, senior executive vice-president responsible for 3G services, said.
"From that perspective, it will be a turning point this year", he added.
Mr Tsuda's comments highlight growing confidence that the group's 3G service, branded FOMA, is set to take off over the next few years.
FOMA, which was launched in October 2001, has had a much slower start than DoCoMo initially expected, forcing Japan's largest mobile phone group to cut its forecast subscriber target for the end of March 2003 from 1.38m to just 320,000.
FOMA's progress has been watched by the industry with keen interest as a guide to whether or not 3G services using the wide-band CDMA (W-CDMA) standard would gain popularity with consumers.
European mobile phone operators, which paid very high prices for W-CDMA licences, have been particularly anxious for signs that FOMA, which is the first W-CDMA service in the world, was succeeding in Japan.
Operators are keen for users to migrate to 3G, which allows more sophisticated usage of mobile phones, to boost traffic.
DoCoMo's service, which initially stumbled as a result of bulky and expensive handsets, short battery life and poor coverage, has started to pick up recently with the launch of more attractive handsets.
In March alone, 138,400 subscribers signed up for FOMA, compared with numbers in the low thousands for some previous months.
Mr Tsuda was careful to warn that DoCoMo "does not expect FOMA to sign up hundreds of millions of subscribers [this year]. For that, it will take a few more years", he said. DoCoMo no longer talks about the initial target of 6m users by March, 2005.
FOMA handsets have been inferior to cheaper, second-and-a-half generation (2.5G) handsets, which Japanese consumers are accustomed to. The battery stand-by time for the best FOMA handset is about 250 hours when not in use, compared with 460 for the best 2.5G handsets.
Mr Tsuda said that new FOMA handsets, due out towards the end of the year, would be on a par with 2.5G handsets in terms of functionality and attractiveness. Thereafter, FOMA handsets would be significantly better.
The latest handsets from Matsushita, for example, have been extremely popular and are in short supply, he added. Mr Tsuda expects video mail to become a driver of 3G phones but said it was not clear whether this service would increase average revenue per user.
DoCoMo has sold more than 10m camera phones since last June but Mr Tsuda does not expect camera phones to increase traffic significantly. |
