NTT Docomo

NTT DoCoMo
	DoCoMo
Company type	Spinoff from NTT
Industry	Wireless Services
Founded	August 1991
Headquarters	Japan
Key people	Masao Nakamura, President & CEO
Products	i-Mode, WCDMA, FOMA, HSDPA
Revenue	6,140,000,000,000 yen (2023)
Net income	1,144,400,000,000 yen (2023)
Number of employees	21,527 2005
Website	NTT DoCoMo website

NTT DoCoMo building in Shinagawa

NTT DoCoMo, Inc. TYO: 9437, NYSE: DCM is the predominant mobile phone operator in Japan. The name is officially an abbreviation of the phrase Do Communications Over the Mobile Network, but also means “everywhere” in Japanese.

DoCoMo was spun off from NTT in August 1991 to take over the mobile cellular operations. DoCoMo provides 2G(MOVA) PDC cellular services in 800 MHz and 1.5 GHz bands (total 34 MHz bandwidth), and 3G(FOMA) W-CDMA services in the 2 GHz (1945-1960 MHz) band. Its businesses also include PHS (Paldio), paging, and satellite. DoCoMo has announced that its PHS services will be phased out over the next few years.

Docomo is providing phone, video phone(FOMA and Some PHS), i-mode(internet), and mail (i-mode mail, Short Mail, and SMS).

Customers

DoCoMo had 49.8 million cellular customers, including more than 15.8 million FOMA subscribers and 45 million i-mode users. It has a dominating market share in Japan of 56.0%, which has been declining slightly in recent years.

i-Mode

DoCoMo was the first mobile operator globally to successfully introduce mobile data services commercially to a broad customer base. i-Mode was started in February 1999 and the customer response exceeded all expectations, while at the same time the plan to introduce mobile data services using the WAP concept and brand did not find resonance with subscribers. Within a short time DoCoMo attracted almost all 40 million subscribers as i-Mode subscribers, who pay a separate monthly subscription charge for i-Mode, and most of whom also pay for a variety of mobile content, mobile music, information services and mobile games.

Within a short time of i-Mode's start, DoCoMo's competitors introduced very similar data services which initially used very similar business models as i-Mode.

Within a few years, i-Mode and comparable mobile data services by DoCoMo's competitors have become an essential part of Japan's social and commercial infrastructure.

DoCoMo is noted as the creator of the highly successful i-mode mobile Internet services which was launched in February 1999 and now serves more than 43 million users in Japan and more than 3 million users outside of Japan. i-mode is provided by DoCoMo's partners globally in countries like France [1], Germany [2],Greece [3], Italy, Spain and Taiwan. DoCoMo also launched FOMA, the world's first commercial W-CDMA 3G mobile service in October 2001 which finally started to take off around the end of 2003.

FOMA

DoCoMo was the first mobile operator in the world to commercially roll-out 3G mobile communications. DoCoMo's 3G services are marketed under the brand FOMA. At present (2005) FOMA uses wCDMA technology with a data rate of 384 kbit/s. Since DoCoMo was the first carrier to roll out 3G network technology, DoCoMo used technologies different than the European UMTS standards, which were not ready early enough for DoCoMo's roll-out. Recently DoCoMo is working to modify FOMA to conform fully with UMTS standards over time.

HSDPA

DoCoMo is working to upgrade the data rates towards 10 Mbit/s using HSDPA.

Ownership

NTT DoCoMo's shares are publicly traded on several stock exchanges, with the major shareholder (over 60%) being Japan's incumbent operator NTT. NTT is also a publicly traded corporation and the majority share holder is the Government of Japan.

R&D

While most mobile operators globally do not perform any significant R&D and rely on equipment suppliers for the development and supply of new communication equipment, NTT DoCoMo continues the NTT tradition of very extensive R&D efforts. It was mainly DoCoMo's strong R&D investments, which allowed DoCoMo to introduce 3G communications and i-Mode data services long before such services were introduced anywhere else in the world.

DoCoMo's investments outside Japan

NTT DoCoMo has a wide range of foreign investments. However, NTT DoCoMo was not successful in investing in foreign carriers. DoCoMo had invested very large multibillion Dollar amounts in KPN, Hutchison, AT&T Wireless, and had to write-off or sell all these investments in foreign carriers. As a result, DoCoMo booked a total of about US$ 10 billion in losses, while during the same time DoCoMo's Japan operations were profitable.

External links

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