Japan’s NTT DoCoMo, the country’s biggest mobile phone subscriber with over 50 million subscribers, is considering fully entering the American cell phone market – as early as next year. Various Japanese media are reporting that the company plans to offer phones featuring DoCoMo’s proprietary mobile web service “i-mode” in the USA (the picture shows phones from their Japanese summer line-up).
DoCoMo is apparently planning to tap the US market first by operating as a MVNO, perhaps with AT&T or T-Mobile. Good luck with that. The background: Japan is a dramatically shrinking market for mobile phones. The eight main domestic makers of cell phones over here (Casio, Hitachi, NEC, Sharp, Toshiba, Fujitsu, Panasonic and Kyocera) sold 19 percent fewer handsets in 2008 and things look even worse in 2009.
But in the US, DoCoMo is at least 3 years too late: It’s highly unlikely the company will impress anyone with i-mode, a ten year old technology (it flopped in major markets in Europe years ago). And the MVNO concept hasn’t proven to be successful for any company in the US, has it?
Japan have so much cool stuff when is related to mobile. Is a shame DoCoMo doesn’t bring all the new stuff to US :S
If they go straight for the smartphone market instead of trying to introduce i-mode here… well, I could see them doing alright.
Umm, just like LG had a roaring success with Helio. Success breeds success, right?
The market has matured to a stage where people expect the software in their phones to be just as good as the hardware. The Japanese have figured out the hardware, but software of these so-called cool phones is stuck in the 1990s
Which is too bad. The design of the hardware looks prettier than the tablet shaped devices these days. Missed those clamshell phone design.
But the inside is… that.
Exactly.
I’ve read how in Japanese culture, it’s common to pick products based on feature lists and NOTHING ELSE. Since usability and software interface doesn’t tick off an option box, even though it is hugely (maybe even the most) important feature, the companies selling phones don’t give the OS a lot of attention.
Hmmm. Nice. But what is this here is NTT Docomo of 100000&. It looks crazy.
http://www.justcompareit.com/s~q-NTT-Docomo.aspx?ag=3
Hi Serkan…
We all know how much success NTT DoCoMo get in Japan in the past and according to me it will also get good response from American public.
Honestly American phones/phone service sucks balls. I have gone from Nextel (the best) then got bought out by sprint so we left, then verizon (money whores) then I left for T-Mobile which is so much better customer support wise but I want a high tech phone that Docomo puts out. A phone that I can actually entertain myself with.