NTT DoCoMo again raises 3G target

TOKYO — NTT DoCoMo Inc. has hiked by 20 percent the target for the number of subscriptions to its Foma third-generation (3G) telephone service at the end of March this year, the company said Wednesday. The revision comes as a forecast for the period that was made three months ago was met last week.

“When we announced our mid-term results we revised the target (for 3G users at the end of March) to 2 million,” said Shiro Tsuda, senior executive vice president of the carrier at a Tokyo news conference held to announce the company’s third-quarter financial results. “But the number of subscriptions has been increasing steadily so on Jan. 29 the total number exceeded 2 million therefore we have decided to further increase it to 2.4 million.”

The revised target is further good news for NTT DoCoMo’s 3G service, which originally missed subscriber targets for the service and faced criticism from users over its 3G handsets and network coverage area. Subscriptions began taking off around one year ago when a number of new handsets were released that solved many of the problems, such as short battery life, and the company increased the speed of its network build-out.

The company’s latest range of 3G handsets, the 900i series, will be launched later this week when a telephone from Fujitsu Ltd. goes on sale. It will be followed in February and March by handsets from Sharp Corp., Mitsubishi Electric Corp., Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. Ltd. and NEC Corp.

For the third quarter, users of the 3G service spent on average ¥10,270 ($102) per month or which ¥7,010 was on voice service and ¥3,260 on packet data service including I-mode wireless Internet. This is roughly in line with results announced three months ago for the first six months of the fiscal year and is well above that for the company’s second-generation service. On its 2G network, users spent on average ¥7,730 per month or which ¥1,930 was on data service.

In the first nine months of this fiscal year, the period from April to December 2003, consolidated operating revenue was ¥3.8 trillion, operating profit was ¥843 billion and net profit was ¥494 billion. All of the figures are unaudited and comparisons for the same period last year are not available as the company began reporting quarterly results this year.

“Compared to our full-year forecast we can say we are on pace with the target,” said Tsuda. “Given the competitive situation we are not going to revise our forecasts and (will) do our best to achieve our stated targets.”

On the issue of whether NTT DoCoMo will make a bid for AT&T Wireless Services Inc., the U.S. carrier in which it holds a 16 percent stake and which has said it is open for bids, Tsuda didn’t provide a direct answer.

“As for AT&T Wireless in particular, our evaluation of this company, I think this is drawing the interest of many and I cannot comment on this now,” he said. “Looking at the current situation, AT&T Wireless in the U.S. market ranks No. 3 and on a quarterly basis their performance is growing, but just recently lost steam and had a negative result, and so far we’ve acquired 16 percent and we are carefully watching and interested in the performance of this company.

“There is a lot of speculation with regard to the acquisition of this company but we would like to maintain this relationship going forward and that’s the current situation,” he said.