|
 Only 18 months ago young, jeans-clad Scandinavian entrepreneurs seemed to be guiding the destiny of the Internet phone.
But a buttoned-down Japanese executive in his 60s is turning out to be the world’s most successful mobile multimedia maven. Under Tachikawa’s leadership NTT DoCoMo’s wireless data service, i-mode, has put Japan — rather than Europe or the U.S. — at the forefront of the wireless Internet industry.
Today, i-mode has 27.8 million customers and accounts for 60% of the domestic market. The firm has applications that consumers love — games, Hello Kitty screensavers — but also a business model that makes money from data fees, billing commissions and additional voice minutes. Now Tachikawa is moving beyond Japan, taking minority stakes in Britain’s Hutchison 3G, the mobile unit of Dutch carrier KPN and AT&T Wireless in the U.S. He has also bought a controlling stake in AOL Japan, which he is recasting as DoCoMo AOL.
The Vision Thing: "DoCoMo is promoting the spread of w-cdma (a global standard for wireless Internet access) and developing various network-based mobile multimedia services with our global partners so that our customers will be able to make calls and access services using the same handset anywhere in the world."
Forward Spin: If DoCoMo wants to take on Britain’s Vodafone on the global stage it will have to become more aggressive. Analysts say it should take advantage of the economic downturn to snap up troubled mobile operators.
|
