TOKYO—NTT DoCoMo Inc. reported a 50 percent drop in first half net profits, which the carrier attributed to a $2.1 billion write down on its investment in Dutch mobile operator KPN Mobile. The shortfall resulted in a net loss of $230 million for the six months ended Sept. 30, compared with a profit of $837 million last year.
DoCoMo also lowered its earnings forecasts for the year due to increased competition and the saturation of the Japanese market.
Even with the disappointing results from KPN, DoCoMo said it plans to transfer technologies for its i-mode wireless Internet service to the Dutch carrier for the Belgium and Netherlands’ market. The partnership is contracted until 2012, with DoCoMo collecting licensing fees for the technology.
The carrier finished the half with 38.4 million cellular customers, or roughly 59 percent of wireless customers in Japan. More than 72 percent of the carrier’s customer base, or 27.7 million customers, also subscribed to its i-mode service.
Average revenue per user was reported at $70.81, made up of $58.33 in voice ARPU and $12.48 from I-mode services. Subscribers averaged 181 minutes of use on the network, with a customer churn rate of 1.19 percent.
DoCoMo also reported it was expanding coverage of its FOMA 3G service to the southern of the Kanto region surrounding Tokyo and Yokohama beginning Dec. 1. The service is currently available within Route 16, the national highway encircling central Tokyo. Regional companies DoCoMo Tokai and DoCoMo Kansai are also scheduled to launch FOMA service in their respective markets on the same day.
DoCoMo said it expects to offer service in every major Japanese city by next spring.
