NTT DoCoMo Inc introduced a series of advertisements this week promoting an older wireless technology, a move that analysts and investors say signifies the failure of the company's high-speed phone service.
The full-page color ads in the Asian Wall Street Journal and the Nihon Keizai newspaper tout features of DoCoMo's i-mode, a four-year-old service that allows users to send e-mails, browse Web sites and buy tickets from their handsets.
The Journal ad promotes the i-mode service itself while the Nihon Keizai ad is for camera phones for DoCoMo's picture-messaging service. The ads may signal that DoCoMo, Japan's largest mobile-phone company, is looking for ways to squeeze revenues from its older i-mode technology while it awaits broader acceptance of its year-old high-speed service, dubbed FOMA, analysts and investors said. I-mode operates on DoCoMo's slower networks using second-generation, or 2G, technology.
"DoCoMo has to rely on its 2G network until FOMA is mature enough to take large numbers of subscribers," said Bruce Kirk, a researcher at KBC Securities Japan. "That's unlikely to happen until late 2003."
DoCoMo's Asian Wall Street Journal ad, which came a day after the Tokyo-based company rejected a request from KPN Mobile NV to pour more money into the Dutch company, welcomed the introduction of wireless Web services by KPN's Belgium unit. Company officials said there was no significance to the timing of the advertisements.
"It's a coincidence that our i-mode ad came out" immediately after the company presented new FOMA handsets, and decided not to make additional capital investments in Royal KPN NV's mobile-phone unit, spokeswoman Mariko Hanaoka said.
The colored ad also promoted the fact that services similar to i-mode are now running in six areas of the world thanks to the recent introduction of the services by DoCoMo partners Bouygues Telecommunications of France and BASE of Belgium.
The full-page Nihon Keizai ad from DoCoMo featured six new camera-equipped handset models for the mobile-phone operator's older service, instead of three new FOMA handsets the company demonstrated at its headquarters a day earlier.
The company runs ads in the International Herald Tribune, the Financial Times and magazines such as Fortune in a bid to enhance its recognition outside Japan, where it "is still relatively unknown," Hanaoka said.
The unit of Japan's former telecommunications monopoly has tried to use its minority stakes in its US and European partners to promote the use of i-mode, as well as a standard it helped develop for high-speed Internet access that will be started in Europe over the next two years.
European phone companies, including Deutsche Telekom AG, have been slashing investments as they focus on cutting debt after spending about US$100 billion for the new wireless licenses.
By using its partners' names in newspaper ads in countries where they are headquartered, DoCoMo wants to "get more attention, and support our partners in selling i-mode services at the same time," she said.
NO-LIMITS PARTNERSHIP: ‘The bottom line’ is that if the US were to have a conflict with China or Russia it would likely open up a second front with the other, a US senator said Beijing and Moscow could cooperate in a conflict over Taiwan, the top US intelligence chief told the US Senate this week. “We see China and Russia, for the first time, exercising together in relation to Taiwan and recognizing that this is a place where China definitely wants Russia to be working with them, and we see no reason why they wouldn’t,” US Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines told a US Senate Committee on Armed Services hearing on Thursday. US Senator Mike Rounds asked Haines about such a potential scenario. He also asked US Defense Intelligence Agency Director Lieutenant General Jeffrey Kruse
INSPIRING: Taiwan has been a model in the Asia-Pacific region with its democratic transition, free and fair elections and open society, the vice president-elect said Taiwan can play a leadership role in the Asia-Pacific region, vice president-elect Hsiao Bi-khim (蕭美琴) told a forum in Taipei yesterday, highlighting the nation’s resilience in the face of geopolitical challenges. “Not only can Taiwan help, but Taiwan can lead ... not only can Taiwan play a leadership role, but Taiwan’s leadership is important to the world,” Hsiao told the annual forum hosted by the Center for Asia-Pacific Resilience and Innovation think tank. Hsiao thanked Taiwan’s international friends for their long-term support, citing the example of US President Joe Biden last month signing into law a bill to provide aid to Taiwan,
China’s intrusive and territorial claims in the Indo-Pacific region are “illegal, coercive, aggressive and deceptive,” new US Indo-Pacific Commander Admiral Samuel Paparo said on Friday, adding that he would continue working with allies and partners to keep the area free and open. Paparo made the remarks at a change-of-command ceremony at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam in Hawaii, where he took over the command from Admiral John Aquilino. “Our world faces a complex problem set in the troubling actions of the People’s Republic of China [PRC] and its rapid buildup of forces. We must be ready to answer the PRC’s increasingly intrusive and
STATE OF THE NATION: The legislature should invite the president to deliver an address every year, the TPP said, adding that Lai should also have to answer legislators’ questions The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) yesterday proposed inviting president-elect William Lai (賴清德) to make a historic first state of the nation address at the legislature following his inauguration on May 20. Lai is expected to face many domestic and international challenges, and should clarify his intended policies with the public’s representatives, KMT caucus secretary-general Hung Meng-kai (洪孟楷) said when making the proposal at a meeting of the legislature’s Procedure Committee. The committee voted to add the item to the agenda for Friday, along with another similar proposal put forward by the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP). The invitation is in line with Article 15-2