Japanese Combine Mobile Phone, Web Craze

From:
http://www.techweb.com/wire/story/reuters/REU20000522S0002

 Technology News

Japanese Combine Mobile Phone, Web Craze
(05/22/00, 7:14 a.m. ET)
By Reuters

TOKYO-In Japan, the craze for the Internet and mobile phones go hand in
hand.

Figures released by the country's three cell phone operators on Monday
showed the number ofJapanese mobile phone users with Internet access will
top 10
million by the end of May, making the mobile phone Japan's most popular way
of accessing the Web.

About 18 percent of Japan's mobile phone users will be equipped with
Web-compatible phones by the end of the month, the data showed.

NTT DoCoMo Inc, a mobile phone unit of telecoms giant Nippon Telegraph and
Telephone Corp, said it had 6.92 million subscribers to its Internet service
known as i-mode as of Sunday, and the number of subscribers was increasing
by 20,000 a day.

DoCoMo's i-mode, where users can exchange e-mail, do online banking and
navigate more than 7,000 Internet sites set up for the service, has
overtaken traditional
Japanese Internet service providers (ISPs) such as Fujitsu Ltd to become
Japan's biggest Internet access platform.

The popularity of the service forced DoCoMo to temporarily limit sales of
i-mode mobile phones last month because of capacity problems created by a
surge
in subscribers.

DoCoMo's competitors are also enjoying strong sales of Web

Nippon Ido Tsushin Corp, the cell phone arm of Japan's DDI Corp, said it had
about two million subscribers to its Web-access services, EZ Web and EZ
Access,
as of last Wednesday.

J-Phone, the mobile phone unit of Japan Telecom Co Ltd saw subscribers to
its J-Sky Internet service almost double in April from the previous month to
a
total 1.04 million. If DoCoMo i-mode users continue growing at the current
rate, the total number of subscribers using mobile phones to access the Web
will exceed 10 million by the end of May.

Mobile phones are the preferred mode of communication in Japan, with 56.8
million subscribers as of the end of March, compared to the 55.4 million
subscribers
of phone services on fixed analogue lines.
Reuters
Copyright 2000 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved.

Received on Wednesday, 24 May 2000 12:48:08 UTC