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DoCoMo planning to sell Fujitsu, HTC smartphones

NTT DoCoMo Inc, Japan's biggest mobile phone company, will sell smartphones made by Fujitsu Ltd and High Tech Computer Corp (HTC, 宏達電子) to attract business users.

The phones will be sold from the first quarter of next year, Tokyo-based DoCoMo said yesterday. Roland Arafat, a spokesman for DoCoMo, declined to provide prices for the handsets.

Selling more smartphones, which allow users to send e-mail, read business documents and browse the Internet, will build on DoCoMo's plan to boost sales earned from businesses.

A tie-up with Fujitsu, Japan's largest computer-services firm, may help DoCoMo gain access to more corporate customers, a market that's also targeted by domestic rivals KDDI Corp and Softbank Corp.

"Corporate customers usually stay with a carrier for a long time and our competitors are rushing toward this segment," Kiyohito Nagata, a senior vice president at DoCoMo, told reporters in Tokyo.

Fujitsu has a strong presence among corporate customers, Nagata said.

He estimates sales of smartphones and personal digital assistants at approximately 1 million units a year, with about 20 percent to businesses.

The F1100 from Fujitsu recognizes the owner's fingerprint as a security feature, while HTC's HT1100 model incorporates a touch-screen.

DoCoMo plans to increase the proportion of sales it gets from businesses from the current 10 percent level, chief executive Masao Nakamura said on July 27, without providing a target.

DoCoMo has fixed-rate plans for unlimited data services and offers Research In Motion Ltd's BlackBerry device for corporate contracts.
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