DoCoMo Growth Beats Rivals for First Time in Three Years

April 10, 2006 - source: BWCS

Former Japanese state operator mobile unit NTT DoCoMo has finally outshone its rival KDDI in the annual mobile phone subscriber addition stakes. For the last fiscal year, ending March 31, 2006, the mobile giant reported that its customer base grew faster than its main competitor's did for the first time since 2003.

In fact, DoCoMo reported a net increase in its subscriber base of 2.318 million, compared to the 2.306 million recorded by KDDI. DoCoMo put its success down to the increased number of gadgets its phones now come equipped with, such as mobile wallet facilities.

KDDI's "au" service remained the largest growing single service in Japan with an increase of 3.156 million in the twelvemonth period. However, the company's Tu-Ka service, which it bought out last year, showed a strong decline in numbers over the year to the end of March 2006. The relative success of "au" was put down to the popularity of its music download services and the availability of handsets that can show digital terrestrial TV broadcasts.

The third player in the Japanese market, Vodafone KK, recently sold to domestic ISP Softbank, recorded net subscription growth of only 169,200 for the year. The company put this down to a delay in its introduction of 3G handsets. In total the Japanese market saw a net increase of 4.79 million in the year to 31 March 2006, which marked the lowest rate of increase since records were started in 1995.