NTT DoCoMo has said only two firms will have handsets available for its 3G service’s launch in May.
On Tuesday, NTT DoCoMo’s president admitted that out of the eleven firms that it has signed contracts with to provide 3G devices, only Matsushita and NEC will have handsets available when its 3G services launch in May. The company has also said it only expects to sell 150,000 handsets in the service’s first year of operations.
It looks like another blow to the mobile industry. Already, many operators in Europe and Asia have delayed rollout of 2.5G and 3G services due to – they say – a lack of handsets. Vodafone has revised expected user numbers for its Vizzavi mPortal, since it doesn’t expect to have significant numbers of GPRS handsets available until late 2001. At the same time, Japan Telecom has said it will not launch its 3G service until next June, when the original date was December this year.
However, DoCoMo is still ahead of the game. Unlike these operators, it will still launch its service. While the company doesn’t expect it to be a mass-market offering for a couple of years, 150,000 handsets is certainly more than just a trial. And as more handsets become available, DoCoMo will be in a better position than its rivals to build on its existing services and upgrade some of its 20 million iMode subscribers to 3G services.
DoCoMo’s relative success brings up a question. Why, if none of the other operators can obtain handsets, can it? The answer is partly that the Japanese giant has devoted more energy than other operators into building relationships with manufacturers, committing significant resources to developing the equipment and thus ensuring supplies. But none of the other operators in Europe or Asia actually have 3G networks that are fit to launch within the next year, irrespective of whether they could find handsets or not. The other mobile operators are allowing the handset manufacturers to take the blame for the delay in 3G rollout. However, perhaps more importantly, these delays are also due to problems in building out their own networks.
