Word: wirelessly
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...Without a whiz-bang new technology to distinguish itself from competitors, Japan's largest company is vulnerable to threats to its dominance of the domestic wireless market. Some 67.5 million?more than of Japan's population?already subscribe to mobile-phone services, and analysts say the market is approaching saturation. Net growth in subscriptions fell 31.7% in December compared with the same month in 2000, after falling 26% in November, according to Merrill Lynch. While DoCoMo holds a 59% market share, competition for new and existing users is fierce. KDDI's au and Tu-ka services, with...
...spend more in sales commissions and handset subsidies, narrowing profit margins. Compounding the com-pany's problems is a disturbing dip in the all-important average revenue per user, called the ARPU in industry lingo. Thanks in part to i-mode, Japan's cell-phone users spend more on wireless services than their counterparts elsewhere in the world?about $63 per month compared with $53 in the U.S., for example. But recession-weary Japanese are cutting back on spending by going without or substituting cheaper wireless e-mail for expensive voice calls. A shrinking ARPU is one reason DoCoMo expects...
...Over the past year, the company has gone on a $15-billion shopping binge around the world, snapping up minority ownership stakes in mobile-phone carriers including 25% of Hutchison Telecommunications in Hong Kong, 15% of KPN Mobile in the Netherlands, in addition to the 16% of AT&T Wireless. "Going global is not a good or bad strategy for DoCoMo," says Shinji Moriyuki, a senior analyst at Daiwa Institute of Research. "It is a 'must' strategy...
...however, DoCoMo's international investments have yielded more red ink than respect. DoCoMo was forced to take a $2 billion write-down for its KPN purchase this past half-year due to the plunge in telecom stocks. It will likely report another hit for its AT&T Wireless investment in the quarter ending March 31. DoCoMo overpaid for its overseas stakes, says Kenshi Tazaki, managing director of consultancy Gartner Japan. "On the other hand, DoCoMo's stock was valued higher then, too," Tazaki says. "At the time they had buying power that, with all the problems they currently face, they...
...Persuading partners to adopt DoCoMo technology is proving difficult. Carriers in other countries have been reluctant to spend heavily to upgrade their wireless data networks, fearing their countrymen do not have the same enthusiasm for photo-swapping, game-playing handsets as the Japanese. After spending billions of dollars getting government licenses to operate 3G systems, many debt-ridden carriers have put plans for network overhauls on the back burner. "The whole point of investing abroad was a speedy roll-out for 3G," says Yasumasa Goda, analyst for Merrill Lynch Japan Securities. "But clearly this is no longer realistic...