Docomo
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In 1952 NTT was established as a semi-independent organization that was tasked to reconstruct Japan’s domestic telecom infrastructure. It was also considered as the AT&T of America and was modelled after it. DoCoMo considered being one of Japan’s gargantuan monopolies. It was turned off by its parents by the year 1992. In the early nineties the Engineers in NTT had viewed assignments to the DoCoMo division as a sort of exile. As cellular technology was considered old fashioned the industry was suffering under the weight of high payment prices and slow moving market.
As time passed, cellular phone became a more integral part in the society. DoCoMo had been called the future of the wireless internet that had bought Japan once considered as an Internet slacker to the head of new type of economy that would bring technology to rise in Japan which leads to the secret of DoCoMo a wireless internet service called i-mode. This service had taken standard mobile voice communications and added Internet access, email and other networking capabilities. I-mode’s popularity was proved to be astounding as i-mode subscribers had reached 1,000,000 and later had reached to 10 Million subscribers
I-mode success had become one of Japan’s hottest stocks DoCoMo served as the ideal company to Japanese entrepreneurs and small Internet junkies to pursue in this kind of livelihood in a country once considered behind Internet race it can be said that i-mode proved Japan’s reputation to produce powerhouse ideas and to test products that would still intact.
DoCoMo had also faced a number of decisions by the time i-mode was a success when placed on the market. One of it is that i-mode’s explosive subscriber growth had led to problems with regards to service in several densely populated areas of Japan. Signal processing and software glitches during peak usage periods were experienced by the users by the year 2000 that forced DoCoMo to cram its user’s signals into already overcrowded frequency spectrums. Another problem would be the profit-draining service of DoCoMo’s called PHS was still unresolved. Lastly, domestic and international companies began to heat up competition by offering alternative services to I-mode.
The wireless world began towards a new generation of cellular technology, were a company success or failure would come to the head. DoCoMo after initial success in I-mode had been subjected of frequent speculation. Would the company set sights internationally? Will it be able to stimulate i-mode fever outside Japan and how did DoCoMo see this technology progress into the next generation. Lastly, how would DoCoMo maintain its lead in a tightening marketplace?