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More than 30 million in Japan are already connected to the mobile internet using i-mode mobile
phones. Now NTr DoCoMo's chief operating officer, Yoshinori Uda, is developing a worldwide
strategy to form alliances to take the top-rating technology to Europe and the US
The Japanese mobile phone giant DoCoMo is already the fifth largest telco in the world by revenue and now it has moved onto the next stage of its strategy to become a powerful force in the industry around the world.
DoCoMo has made a series of strategic investments and technology alliances in Europe, the US and south-east Asia which give it a co-ordinating role in building a worldwide third-generation mobile phone operation. Listings in March on the London and New York stock exchanges will raise the company's profile outside Japan so that it is in a better position to do the sort of deals with the content providers that will be an essential ingredient in a successful 3G business.
"We are helping to launch a new era for the mobile communications industry in 2002," says Yoshinori Uda, the chief operating officer of NTT DoCoMo, the person in charge of the company's international strategy. "We intend to pursue increasingly aggressive growth strategy in Europe."
DoCoMo is 67.1% owned by Nippon Telegraph and Telephone, itself still 65.5% owned by the Japanese state. In the 10 years since it was set up as a separate operation, DoCoMo has been stunningly success - and particularly so since February 1999 when it launched i-mode, effectively a mobile internet service.
Ask almost any executive from any rival mobile telecoms company in Europe or the US -especially one who's been to Japan - and they will shake their heads in wonder at the thought of millions of DoCoMo customers playing games, reading the news, checking shares, booking tickets, looking at information, checking bank accounts, buying services and e-mailing from their NEC or Matsushita mobile phones.
And it really a lot of them. There were five million just over a year after launch and the 30 million mark was reached on December 25 2001 - about a quarter of the population of Japan. Including all the subscribers to pre-i-mode services, DoCoMo now has 40 million customers in Japan.
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