TOKYO-Gartner Japan, a Japanese business unit of Gartner Group, has predicted the mobile handset market on a unit basis will expand at an annual increasing rate of 5.3 percent between 2001 and 2006 in Japan, however, NTT DoCoMo’s FOMA service will not take off until 2005.
Gartner Japan said because the population coverage of FOMA networks would be almost the same as PDC networks, the Japanese system for second-generation service, by 2005 and user needs for high-speed service would be matured by around 2005, FOMA service would take off in that same year.
NTT DoCoMo launched FOMA service last October. However as of 25 July, FOMA subscribers numbered only 125,000. NTT DoCoMo is targeting to sell 1.3 million units of FOMA handsets by the end of March 2003. Keiji Tachikawa, president of NTT DoCoMo, said at a press conference on 26 July that he would maintain the target figure of 1.3 million customers by March 2003 since DoCoMo plans to launch new handsets with new functions within the next few months. However, many market watchers said it will be quite difficult for NTT DoCoMo to clear the target.
According to Gartner Japan, the Japanese mobile handset market on a unit basis in 2001 shrank by 2.3 percent on the year to 40.58 million units. On the other hand, the market on a value basis expanded by 15 percent on the year to 1.7 trillion yen (US$14.2 billion) because price per unit increased.
