NEW YORK-As it gears up to export i-mode to the United States as part of its alliance with AT&T Wireless Services Inc., NTT DoCoMo recently has established an American subsidiary and offices on the East and West coasts.
The Japanese parent has established NTT DoCoMo USA Inc. as a wholly owned subsidiary of DoCoMo, which now provides 77 percent of NTT’s revenues, said Shunichiro Mishima, vice president of business development.
Mishima, a 15-year veteran of the company, is based in a New York satellite office for NTT DoCoMo USA, which is headquartered in San Jose, Calif.
NTT DoCoMo plans to increase its existing 16-percent stake in AT&T Wireless when AT&T Corp. spins it off, a development expected this summer, Mishima said earlier this month at Angelbeat’s Internet Untethered conference here.
“There will be a wholly owned subsidiary of AT&T Wireless that plans to introduce i-mode. PocketNet will be transferred to i-mode. We will use an i-mode portal with a dual browser for WAP and HTML,” he said.
“We (AT&T Wireless and DoCoMo) have formed an advisory committee to plan this, but I cannot say when AT&T Wireless plans to introduce i-mode because that would be considered forward-looking statements,” he said.
However, Keiji Tachikawa, president of NTT DoCoMo, said in late March that plans are to launch i-mode services in Europe and the United States by the spring of 2002.
The beachhead that NTT DoCoMo has established in the United States is part of its larger plan to export the concept and the service worldwide, Mishima said. The Japanese operator established DoCoMo Europe in the United Kingdom in November. More recently, it opened an i-mode research institute in Germany.
“Many Americans think most i-mode users (in Japan) are teen-agers, but only 7 percent are under 20 years old … Many American people also think the success of i-mode is based on Japanese culture, but I don’t think so,” he said.
“DoCoMo’s openness, giving access to other ISPs (Internet Service Providers) and content providers, lets all of us gain our own rewards. … Our goal is to create a virtuous circle in which the more people use the applications, the more applications there are for people to use and the more they will use them.”
