According to foreign media reports on August 8, Beijing time, NTT DoCoMo (hereinafter referred to as "DoCoMo"), Japan's largest mobile operator, will order more Sony smartphones because Apple's iTunes store is in competition with DoCoMo's e-commerce business, which has kept this operator from establishing a cooperative relationship with Apple.
Kazuto Tsubouchi, DoCoMo’s Chief Financial Officer, said that since the launch of Sony Xperia A smartphone in May this year, sales of this product will reach 2 million units by September 30. DoCoMo is trying to promote growth through phone discounts, as its pace of adding new users is slower compared to the other two operators, KDDI and SoftBank, who sell iPhones. Kazuto Tsubouchi said, "To beat the iPhone, we must offer products that are easy for users to use. Sony's brand and Xperia's image are as excellent as the iPhone."
However, Kazuto Tsubouchi indicated that if the company can limit the sales volume of the iPhone to within 30% of DoCoMo's total smartphone sales, it might change its stance on the iPhone. DoCoMo's online store is named "dmarket" and provides music, video, and game download services.
DoCoMo stated that as of August 4, the company had sold 1.2 million Xperia A phones; Samsung Electronics' flagship smartphone Galaxy S4 had sales of about 630,000 units.
User Growth
Nathan Ramler, an analyst at Macquarie Securities in Tokyo, said that after re-launching promotional activities aimed at reclaiming consumers, DoCoMo is "making a comeback." DoCoMo's promotional activities "will continue to focus on selling phones."
Yu Tominaga, a spokesperson for Sony in Tokyo, said, "We will respond to market demand." He said that Sony's current target audience is broader, including those users who are preparing to upgrade from feature phones to smartphones.
On August 1, Sony announced that its smartphone business turned profitable in the previous fiscal quarter, reversing losses from the same period last year. In the first fiscal quarter ended June 30, Sony shipped a total of 9.6 million smartphones, higher than 7.4 million units in the same period last year. Sony expects that smartphone shipments for the current fiscal year will reach 42 million units.
Whether DoCoMo's revenue can grow depends on the company's ability to add new users. Kazuto Tsubouchi, DoCoMo’s Chief Financial Officer, said that in the current fiscal year ending March 31, 2014, the company plans to cut expenditures by 110 billion yen (approximately $1.1 billion). Although DoCoMo currently holds a 45% share of Japan's mobile market, far exceeding KDDI's 28%, among Japan's three major operators, DoCoMo has the slowest growth rate in new user additions. In July this year, DoCoMo added 172,500 new users, trailing behind KDDI's 225,200 and SoftBank's 254,500.
On July 26, DoCoMo stated that the company's operating profit in the first fiscal quarter fell by 5.8% year-on-year to 247.5 billion yen. DoCoMo currently has over 60 million subscribers, almost half of Japan's population of 127 million. The company expects that net profit for the current fiscal year will increase by 3.9% to 51 billion yen; revenue will grow by 3.8%. DoCoMo anticipates that its planned total smartphone sales for the current fiscal year will rise from 23.55 million units to 24.5 million units.