Nokia To Start Mobile Service In Japan

[Mulboyne]

Reuters: Nokia to start new service
NOKIA plans to launch a mobile phone service in Japan next spring, a move expected to intensify competition among Japanese cellphone carriers, Japanese daily Yomiuri Shimbun reported on Saturday. Finnish cellphone manufacturer Nokia is expected to use lines owned by Japan's biggest mobile phone carrier, NTT Docomo, under an arrangement called mobile virtual network operator, the paper said. Nokia will first offer the service with high-end models to establish a strong brand, Mr Yomiuri said.

[samuraiwig]

Selling bandwidth to a MVNO makes sense for a struggling company that's not got enough subscribers to pay for its infrastructure. I know DoCoMo hasn't been adding new subscribers, but what have they got to gain from doing this?

[Kuang_Grade]

From DoCoMo's standpoint, I suspect they don't see much downside and a good sized (likely with a bunch of non-refundable upfront/guaranteed payments) check from Nokia to help cover some of their fixed network operating costs doesn't hurt.

The bigger question in my mind is what does Nokia expect to gain from this? I understand they haven't had much luck with J carriers outside of "world phones" designed for use outside of Japan but how are they going to market this to J folks...."Do you hate japanese cell phones? Do you like thick candybar type phones?...Well, you are in luck..." Unless they are only going to go after the ultra lux market and/or just use this a live market testing lab, I'm not sure what they can realistically expect to accomplish in the J market going this route.

Has anyone heard about how that Japanese MVNO Disney started earlier in the year is doing?

[hu5h]

wohoo! let's shuushoku!

i dont really think this is really gonna succeed and change anything drastically, but nokia is quite obviously not a strong player in japan. and this could be a good "first" step, right?

selling bandwidth to MVNOs does happen. EMobile for instance roams in ntt when they don't have coverage iirc. willcom dont have their own basestations either, no?

i have always been a nokia guy (outside of japan ofcourse), and i really hope to see some handset in japan in the future. but they probably wont adapt to the market and just keep releasing modified versions of the "normal" nokias.

anyway, nice update. cheers.