The leading provider of services for smartphones in the US on Thursday stopped offering new customers “all-you-can-eat” data plans.
Verizon Wireless joined AT&T and T-Mobile USA in a shift away from plans that allow smartphone or tablet computer users to stream unlimited amounts of digital data for fixed prices.
As modern lifestyles increasingly involve using wireless gadgets to access videos, pictures, maps and other data on the Internet, companies handling that traffic are asking people to pay monthly based on quantity.
Verizon customers who already have unlimited wireless data plans were able to keep them, but no new accounts are to be made available.
The move by Verizon came as mobile industry tracker Localytics released a study indicating that the telecoms service is used by nearly a third of all iPhone 4 smartphones in the US.
The trend toward metering wireless data use also comes as US carriers invest in new-generation networks that promise huge advances in data speed.
In February, Verizon gave itself the option to slow wireless data feeds to customers gorging on rich digital content streamed to smartphones or tablet computers.
Implementation of the new “network management” tactic came a week before the eagerly anticipated addition of the iPhone 4 to the cornucopia of devices serviced by Verizon.
Apple’s exclusive alliance with AT&T in the US ended in February when iPhones synched to Verizon’s network hit the market.
Meanwhile, NTT DoCoMo Inc, Japan’s largest mobile-phone carrier, will raise its smartphone sales target on expectations its models using Google Inc’s Android system will lure more users, eroding the share held by Apple’s iPhone.
“Users think Android smartphones are more convenient than Apple’s iPhone because Android lets them have Japanese functions like osaifu keitai,” the debit card function built into many Japanese mobile phones, company president Ryuji Yamada said in an interview in Tokyo yesterday.
DoCoMo, whose market share fell below 50 percent after rival Softbank Corp introduced the iPhone three years ago, will announce the new smartphone target in October when reporting mid-term earnings, Yamada said.
DoCoMo had said it expected to sell 6 million smartphones this fiscal year, compared with 2.52 million in the 12 months ending in March.
Separately, Yamada said DoCoMo will form a venture with Baidu Inc (百度) in China next month, confirming an earlier report in Nikkei newspaper. The venture, 80 percent owned by Beijing-based Baidu and the rest by DoCoMo, will provide anime, game and e-book services for smartphones. DoCoMo will invest US$22.5 million.
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