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Apple's iPhone finally coming to Japan's DoCoMo
NTT DoCoMo Inc will begin selling Apple Inc's
iPhone as early as this autumn, sources familiar with the matter said on
Friday, as it seeks to halt a loss of market share to rivals already offering
Japan's most popular smartphone. DoCoMo, Japan' biggest mobile carrier, had
long resisted taking on the iPhone, which remains the most popular smartphone
in Japan despite the ascendance of Samsung Electronics Co Ltd's Galaxy series
elsewhere. It has paid heavily for that strategy as it ceded market share to
smaller competitors KDDI Corp and Softbank Corp.
DoCoMo,
a pioneer in mobile Internet and one of the last of the world's large mobile
carriers still not offering the iPhone to its 60 million customers, said in a
stock exchange statement that it had nothing to announce on the matter. Apple
is expected to unveil the latest version of iPhone at an event on September 10.
The Nikkei business daily said an announcement that DoCoMo would begin
marketing the iPhone is likely to come on the same day. Shares in Softbank, the
first Japanese carrier to offer the iPhone, fell 2.8 percent as of 0115 GMT on
Friday, while KDDI dipped 0.1 percent. DoCoMo was 0.5 percent higher after
opening up more than 3 percent. The sources said DoCoMo would continue with its
planned winter promotions for handsets made by Sony Corp, Sharp Corp and
Fujitsu Ltd. Fujitsu shares, which had risen on news that it would be included
in the winter promotions, fell 1.6 percent. Sony rose 0.5 percent while Sharp
fell 1.3 percent. Tokyo's benchmark Nikkei average was down 1.2 percent. Although
DoCoMo's negotiations with Apple had been shrouded in secrecy, it was widely
believed that strict contractual obligations typically linked to iPhone sales
would have conflicted with the Japanese mobile leader's practices. The sources
said it was not clear exactly when a DoCoMo iPhone would go on sale.
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