“NTT DoCoMo Inc., Japan’s largest mobile-phone operator, will be flexible in negotiations with Apple Inc. to offer the iPhone, President Ryuji Yamada said,” Pavel Alpeyev and Junko Kikkawa report for Bloomberg.
“Yamada, who took over as president last month, said in an interview with Bloomberg Television in Tokyo today, ‘Our stance on the iPhone remains flexible,’ he said, without elaborating,” Alpeyev and Junko Kikkawa report.
“Yamada, 58, faces a shrinking market share for DoCoMo, whose lineup of mobile phones and services offers little distinction from that of Softbank Corp. and KDDI Corp. DoCoMo, which includes its trademark i-mode Web-browsing software in all handsets, lost out to Softbank for the right to sell the iPhone from July 11,” Alpeyev and Junko Kikkawa report.
“Softbank may sell about 1 million of the handsets in six months to a year, according to Kenji Nishimura, a Tokyo-based analyst at Deutsche Bank AG,” Alpeyev and Junko Kikkawa report. “DoCoMo, which has been in discussions with Apple to offer the iPhone, ‘hasn’t given up yet,’ Yamada said June 23.”
More in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: The iPhone have-nots are getting antsy — and rightfully so. The prospect of trying to push iPhone lookalikes-not-workalikes for years must be quite painful to ponder.
How can DoCoMo still be in negotiations with Apple?
Softbank is selling the iPhone on July 11th.
DoCoMo took too long to decide and play ball with Apple and lost.
This “willing to be flexible with Apple” is an attempt by DoCoMo to CYA and appear that they didn’t screw-up yet.
They could still sell the iPhone, I have not seen anything that states these new contracts are exclusives, it will be nice to see what happens to price in a competitive market.
In case you don’t know, getting in with NTT DoCoMo in Japan is key. In the mobile phone industry, they are like Microsoft in the PC industry here. They’re everywhere. It’s not like the mobile carriers here where the competition is stiff. In a market where Apple struggles, getting on NTT would really strengthen their position.
i know these pompus asswipes. Piss on em I say.
Not all of Apple iPhone deals are likely to be long term exclusive deals. I would guess that many more of them are short term deals and some could be as short as 30 days after introduction in the market.
I think if Apple were doing all the deals again they’d all be 90 day exclusive deals and would give Apple the freedom to sell the iPhones without subsidy or a carrier contract if the customer wanted to pay full price for the iPhone for the no carrier sale. Apple could also sale the iPhone with a contract for a local market carrier and apply the carrier subsidy to the price to lower the customer’s out the door price.
It would not be hard for Apple to modify iTunes to list all the local iPhone compatible market carriers available in a market and supply the back end code to all carriers worldwide for direct customer iTunes activation of an open iPhone bought without a carrier contract or subsidy. In the end I suspect that the iPhone will start to move to that model anyway as would be iPhone customers that prefer other carriers or pay as you go models start to demand the iPhone.
Well, I like their attitude better than China Mobile’s. Plus, if Apple is willing to give a chance to that Australian mobile carrier that said Apple should stick to their knitting, then they’re willing to give everyone a chance.
The price plans need to be competitive. Since I’m already paying 6000 JPY/month for my fibre optic (100 Mbps) Net connection, a 7000+JPY/month mobile contract, on top of that, regardless of model is not justifiable.
A pretty GUI helps but it doesn’t make up for the lack of functionality… 1 seg… e-money… e-manga…
My 2 1/2 yr old 3G handset is more than enough and at the moment more than an iPhone 3G. Until the iPhone can replace my beloved 12″ G4 then it’s Sharp all the way.