Japanese Carrier NTT DoCoMo Set to Sell iPhone

Carriers such as Softbank Corp and KDDI Corp have been selling iPhones in Japan. The iPhone is considered to be Japan’s best-selling smartphone. However, to date, NTT DoCoMo, which is Japan’s biggest mobile carrier, has not sold the iPhone.

While DoCoMo has held off for a long time, this could all change shortly. The problem has mostly been due to differences with Apple over branding and sales margins. But since then it has been losing some market share to the other carriers.

According to a Reuters report, DoCoMo is expected to begin selling the iPhone sometime in the fall. Although there is some information, due to the confidentiality of the discussions, an un-named source did not go into any of the details or conditions of the agreement.

Some sources say that the main point of contention has been that Apple insists its products be sold completely unaltered. DoCoMo on the other hand, wants to include its logo on all the phones it sells. In addition, Apple demands that iPhone sales make up more than 50 percent of a carrier's total handset sales. DoCoMo is only will go as high as maybe 30 percent.

Nathan Ramler, head of Asia telecommunications research at Macquarie Capital Securities in Tokyo, said, "It's possible Apple was more flexible with DoCoMo because obviously it's a large carrier and it's somewhere they could get new unit volumes to come through."

Another event that could have had an impact is that BlackBerry has decided not to offer its latest Blackberry 10 and the models that support it in Japan. This leaves a huge hole in enterprise security. Corporations are considering switching their corporate contracts to the iPhone.

Ramler said, "The enterprise customers are definitely important for DoCoMo. And we've seen Apple working hard to improve its corporate solution with the iPhone, so it's possible that was part of the consideration as well."

It is quite possible that we will hear more about this later this week. Apple will be unveiling its latest iPhone on Sept. 10. This would be a major step for Apple to increase its presence in Japan. It already has more than a 25 percent share of the Japanese market.

In addition to possibly offering the iPhone this fall, DoCoMo is also planning to offer winter promotions on handsets made by Sony, Sharp and Fujitsu.