TOKYO-NTT DoCoMo Inc. has sold all its shares in Japanese Internet service provider DoCoMo AOL Inc. to America Online Inc., scaling back its ambitions to combine its mobile services with a pure-play Internet company. DoCoMo held 43.23 percent of the company, or 20,980 shares.
In addition, three other Japanese companies-Mitsui & Co. Ltd., Nihon Keizai Shimbun, Inc. and Nikkei Business Publications, Inc.-also will sell their shares to U.S.-based AOL. Mitsui held 11.85 percent of the Japanese company, Nikkei held 3.12 percent and Nikkei BP owned 0.62 percent of DoCoMo AOL’s stock.
The companies did not disclose the sales amounts, but market watchers said the sales price was much less than the more than $150 million DoCoMo originally invested into the venture in 2000 with the intent of linking personal computers and cell phones over the Internet.