HONG KONG: Japan's NTT DoCoMo Inc. said it expected a gain in operating profit in the next fiscal year thanks to fresh revenues from international roaming and lower handset costs.
"We aim for an upward trend," DoCoMo's Executive Senior Vice President Masayuki Hirata said in an interview with Reuters on the sidelines of the ITU Telecom World 2006 forum in Hong Kong.
Competition in the saturated Japanese market is intensifying after the introduction of mobile number portability, which lets customers reselect carriers without changing phone numbers. Almost all of DoCoMo's sales are generated at home, where it competes against KDDI Corp. and newcomer Softbank Corp.
For new sources of revenue, DoCoMo has formed alliances abroad to expand its international roaming services. It's also introducing more phones that are compatible with the globally popular GSM standard, which isn't used in Japan. The Japanese operator is also trying to spread its so-called "wallet phone" service, which allows consumers to use their phones as debit or credit cards, to drive revenues and retain customers.
DoCoMo's recent series of international alliances and previous investments, mainly in Europe and the United States, were aimed to spread its i-mode, the world's first Web surfing technology for mobile phones, and to ensure the adoption of the W-CDMA standard that it uses for 3G networks.
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