“NTT DoCoMo Inc. rose in Tokyo trading, while rivals KDDI Corp. and SoftBank Corp. fell, after a media report suggested Japan’s largest mobile carrier may start selling Apple Inc.’s iPhone,” Takashi Amano and Naoko Fujimura report for Bloomberg News.
“Chief Financial Officer Kazuto Tsubouchi said there are compelling reasons for Apple and his company to reach an agreement, according to an interview published in SankeiBiz,” Amano and Fujimura report. “For Apple, it doesn’t make business sense not to allow Japan’s largest wireless carrier to sell the iPhone, while DoCoMo wants to be able to sell most popular handsets, Sankei said.”
Amano and Fujimura report, “No deal has been reached and the two companies may not be able to come to terms, Sankei reported. DoCoMo has had to compete against smaller rivals who have been able to offer the popular handset… ‘Speculation DoCoMo may sell the iPhone is dragging down KDDI and SoftBank,’ said Tomoaki Kawasaki, an analyst at Iwai Cosmo Holdings Inc. in Tokyo. DoCoMo shares rose 2.1 percent to 159,600 yen at the close in Tokyo, the highest level since May 22. KDDI fell 2 percent, while SoftBank dropped 0.5 percent.”
Read more in the full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Fred Mertz” for the heads up.]
this would be a major tectonic change for DoCoMo. This is the carrier that heavily customises every handset with their own applications and offers special “services” to differentiate themselves from the competitors. It is often difficult to even recognise the brand of the phone on DoCoMo, as it is heavily branded and customised by the carrier. How will they let iPhone into their stable, with absolutely NO custom apps, logos and branding? This would require DoCoMo to completely give up on their core mission (of providing specialised, custom mobile services) and allow themselves to become a dumb pipe. This I would love to see!
They are a dumb pipe, but just do not know it yet.
Other carriers continue to brand and skin other devices but let Apple’s alone. Why not DoCoMo? It isn’t primary school, after all, where “if I allow you, I must allow everyone; therefore I disallow you.”
From what I saw, DoCoMo takes this branding to a whole different level. They have apparently built a walled garden of services (in may ways like the early AOL), and it is all heavily customised and proprietary. It will be a massive shift for them to allow this.
DoCoMo won’t budge.
There is double speak all through this message.
Basically, they will milk the “possibility” of selling the iPhone until the cow dies and then say a deal couldn’t be reached.
Zuuto onaji kagae kata ga kawaranai.
やっぱり、考え方なかなか。。。
Docomo didn’t foresee iPhone to be such a huge success. Now seeing KDDI and Sofbank stealing some of their market making them reconsidering the idea of having iPhone.