“NTT DoCoMo Inc, Japan’s largest mobile provider and a pioneer of the mobile Internet, is one of just a few holdouts among the world’s big mobile carriers not offering Apple Inc’s iPhone to its 60 million customers,” Sophie Knight and Maki Shiraki report for Reuters.
“It is paying heavily for that obstinacy – with a net 3.2 million users jumping ship to its two domestic rivals over the last 4-1/2 years – but is determined to protect the walled garden of services it has built around its own smartphones,” Knight and Shiraki report. “‘We’re trying to develop a lifestyle system,’ NTT DoCoMo CEO Kaoru Kato told Reuters in an interview this week.”
MacDailyNews Take: Kaoru Kato, repeate after us: “NTT DoCoMo is a dumb pipe. NTT DoCoMo is a dumb pipe. NTT DoCoMo is a dumb pipe…” Keep going until you get it. Nobody wants your half-assed carrier crap.
Knight and Shiraki report, “While customers and even some executives increasingly clamor for it to relent and sign an iPhone deal, DoCoMo is showing no signs of softening towards Apple. ‘The biggest problem is the impact on the services that we offer,’ Kato said.”
MacDailyNews Take: Keep repeating…
Knight and Shiraki report, “DoCoMo’s broad offering of exclusive features, however, is no longer attracting what has become the iPhone generation. It is expected eventually to either reach a deal with Apple or risk losing its crown at the top of its industry… DoCoMo’s requirement that its company logo be imprinted on all its devices also conflicts with style-conscious Apple’s insistence that its products be left as manufactured.”
MacDailyNews Take: Keep repeating…
Knight and Shiraki report, “DoCoMo is still hemorrhaging customers to its rivals, with monthly data on Friday showing a net loss of 146,900 existing users to other carriers in June, the 53rd consecutive month of such losses.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Bad leadership with intransigent, antiquated ideas is a recipe for disaster.
NTT DoCoMo will sign a deal for iPhone and they will do so largely according to Apple’s terms, regardless of whether the very confused Kaoru Kato remains as CEO or not.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Fred Mertz” for the heads up.]
Related article:
How Apple’s iPhone conquered Japan – May 6, 2013
