NTT DoCoMo Inc will begin selling Apple Inc's iPhone as early as this
autumn, sources familiar with the matter said on Friday, as it seeks to
halt a loss of market share to rivals already offering Japan's most
popular smartphone.
DoCoMo, Japan' biggest mobile carrier, had long
resisted taking on the iPhone, which remains the most popular smartphone
in Japan despite the ascendance of Samsung Electronics Co Ltd's Galaxy
series elsewhere.
It has paid heavily for that strategy as it ceded market share to smaller competitors KDDI Corp and Softbank Corp.
DoCoMo,
a pioneer in mobile Internet and one of the last of the world's large
mobile carriers still not offering the iPhone to its 60 million
customers, said in a stock exchange statement that it had nothing to
announce on the matter.
Apple is expected to unveil the latest
version of iPhone at an event on September 10. The Nikkei business
daily said an announcement that DoCoMo would begin marketing the iPhone
is likely to come on the same day.
Shares in Softbank, the first
Japanese carrier to offer the iPhone, fell 2.8 percent as of 0115 GMT on
Friday, while KDDI dipped 0.1 percent. DoCoMo was 0.5 percent higher
after opening up more than 3 percent.
The sources said DoCoMo
would continue with its planned winter promotions for handsets made by
Sony Corp, Sharp Corp and Fujitsu Ltd.
Fujitsu shares, which had
risen on news that it would be included in the winter promotions, fell
1.6 percent. Sony rose 0.5 percent while Sharp fell 1.3 percent. Tokyo's
benchmark Nikkei average was down 1.2 percent.
Although DoCoMo's
negotiations with Apple had been shrouded in secrecy, it was widely
believed that strict contractual obligations typically linked to iPhone
sales would have conflicted with the Japanese mobile leader's practices.
The sources said it was not clear exactly when a DoCoMo iPhone would go on sale.
© Thomson Reuters 2013
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