This latest news came amid a broad divestment in the stock market, particularly of technology issues after the sharp decline in Intel.
The recent barrage of problems that have beset Japan’s leading mobile phone company certainly hasn’t helped. The problems include a series of mobile handset recalls, teething troubles in trials for next-generation mobile phones and slower growth in mobile subscribers.
Japanese makers of handsets for i-mode phones, such as Matsushita Electric Industrial, have been forced to recall handsets because of software bugs, dealing a blow to DoCoMo in the process.
Although the number of subscribers for all DoCoMo’s mobile services, including PHS and radio paging, continues to rise, the pace has slowed down. In June, the number of subscribers rose 1% to 37.3m from May, compared with a 1.8% growth rate in June last year.
In the past week the company admitted that possible manufacturing delays could postpone the European introduction of mobile internet services similar to i-mode. DoCoMo is aiming to introduce the service in Europe in June next year through its European partner, KPN Mobile of the Netherlands, the KPN subsidiary in which DoCoMo has a 16% stake.
The mobile phone company’s shares price may have also been damaged by the crumbling merger talks between KPN and Belgacom, the state-controlled Belgian group, according to some industry analysts.
DoCoMo’s shares recovered slightly towards the end of trade, closing at ¥1.84m, down ¥110,000 or 5.6% from Tuesday.
