Top New Stories
1. DoCoMo dips profit announces new flat-data plans
2. Romania goes i-mode in 2007
3. DoCoMo buys into China corporate mobile apps
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1. DoCoMo dips profit announces new flat-data plans
DoCoMo recorded a profit drop in the 9 months April to December 2006 of 22%, mainly due to the costs of moving subscribers to the FOMA 3G network. The number FOMA subscribers was 32.11m at the end of December 2006 (61.5% of all subscribers). The company aims to have two-thirds of its subscribers using its FOMA service by the end of March 2007. DoCoMo also battled with mobile number portability during the period, with a net loss of subscribers to KDDI au.
DoCoMo may find that its giant competitor from across the sea - China Mobile - has more luck in international expansion that itself. China Mobile's market capitalization has tripled in the past two years to $184 billion, overtaking both Vodafone and DoCoMo as the world's most valuable mobile-phone operator. The company is ranked as the biggest by users, with 301.2 million subscribers in 2006. China Mobile acquired Pakistan's PakTel for US$284m, giving it access to Paktel's 1.38 million users. That compares with Hutchison Essar Ltd., India's fourth-largest operator, which is valued at about $18 billion by bidders seeking to buy a company with 22.3 million subscribers.
DoCoMo also announced two new flat-rate data plans: Pake-hodai full will enable FOMA™ i-mode™ subscribers with full-browser handsets to view not only i-mode but also PC websites and videos in Windows Media® format (compatible with P903iX HIGH-SPEED) for a flat monthly rate of 5,985 yen (about US$50). Biz-hodai will offer flat-rate packet communications for non-i-mode FOMA handsets, such as the Motorola M1000, at a monthly rate of 5,985 yen (including tax).
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2. Romania goes i-mode in 2007
Cosmote Romania is the Romanian DoCoMo i-mode alliance partner, through its owner Cosmote of Greece. In The Diplomat Bucharest CEO Nikolaos Tsolas tells the amazing story of how Cosmote has turned around a failed mobile operating firm and added almost one million customers in only 12 months - it's interesting reading.
Tsolas says Cosmote Romania will this year launch its i-mode service, which includes high speed data transfer, mainly for corporate usage – but not video. "The truth is that not many are interested in video telephony on mobile," said Tsolas.
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3. DoCoMo buys into China corporate mobile apps
An interesting announcement by DoCoMo is that the company and UFIDA Software Co., Ltd., "the leading Chinese supplier of enterprise resource planning (ERP) software listed on the Shanghai Stock Exchange, will enter the corporate mobile solutions market in China through a joint investment in Fidatone Mobile Technology and Service Co., Ltd".
DoCoMo will invest US$5 million (roughly 600 million yen) to acquire an approximately 33.3% equity stake in March 2007 (UFIDA invested $8.42). That makes a $28.42m post-money valuation for this start-up!
A corporate mobile-solution subsidiary to be established by Fidatone in February will utilize DoCoMo's expertise and UFIDA's ERP software and customer base to develop and market the solutions in China.
It's interesting because corporate mobile solutions are noticable by their absence in the Japanese market - there are home-grown and in-house written applications and many business uses of the cellular system but it is hard to find a branded standalone company marketing mobile phone business applications. It is a market overwhelmingly dominated by consumer applications. Maybe DoCoMo will learn from the Chinese market, and certainly from UFIDA which is a real software powerhouse and far from DoCoMo's strengths.
4. Mobile firms join to cut phone development costs
DoCoMo announced that it and Renesas Technology, Fujitsu, Mitsubishi Electric Corporation, Sharp Corporation, and Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications, plan to jointly develop a next-generation platform for dual-mode handsets supporting HSDPA/W-CDMA (3G) and GSM/GPRS/EDGE (2G). Development of the platform is targeted to complete during Q2 FY2008 (July-September).
By implementing the platform as a base system the manufacturers (Fujitsu, Mitsubishi Electric, Sharp, and Sony Ericsson) can eliminate the need to each develop common handset functions - significantly reducing development time and costs, allowing the manufacturers to invest more time and resources in developing distinctive handset features and expanding their product portfolio.
The platform will run Symbian. It's a good move by these manufacturers and noticable by its absence is NEC Mobile, which is faltering in its mobile handset business everywhere except Japan. They would have been consulted and be fully informed about this move, so they must be brewing their own new strategy.
5. Telstra search fails to find i-mode
Telstra is DoCoMo's i-mode alliance partner for Australia but you'd be hard-pressed to find any mention of i-mode in their marketing or stores - in fact using the search bar on Tesltra.com "i-mode" or "i-mode" returns the message:
You searched all Telstra sites for the term imode: No Results found.
CEO Sol Trujillo is pushing the NextG 3.5G mobile service with Bigpond Content as the core of his mobile content business. Perhaps Hutchison will take over the i-mode license when Telstra's rights expire.
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