TOKYO, Aug 8 — NTT DoCoMo Inc. will order more Sony Corp. smartphones as Japan’s largest wireless carrier keeps Apple Inc.’s iPhone off its shelves because the iTunes Store competes with its own e-commerce business.

Sales of Sony’s Xperia A handset could reach two million by September 30 after going on sale in May as DoCoMo focuses on a smaller range of devices, chief financial officer Kazuto Tsubouchi said in an interview at company headquarters in Tokyo yesterday.

DoCoMo is trying to spark growth with discounts as it adds users at a slower pace than SoftBank Corp. and KDDI Corp., which both sell the iPhone. DoCoMo was reducing the number of models in its stores by as much as half as its focuses promotions on Sony and Samsung Electronics Co. handsets, Tsubouchi said.

“To win against the iPhone, we have to offer a model which is generally easy to use,” Tsubouchi said. “Sony’s brand and Xperia’s image are just as good as the iPhone.”

DoCoMo may consider altering its stance on the iPhone if it can limit the smartphone’s share of sales to less than 30 per cent of the company’s total, he said. The Japanese carrier’s online store, called dmarket, offers music, videos and games.

DoCoMo’s sales of the Xperia A reached about 1.24 million units as of August 4, and its sales of Samsung’s Galaxy S4 totalled about 630,000, the company said.

User growth

The carrier was “fighting back” after restarting cash-back campaigns to win customers, Nathan Ramler, an analyst at Macquarie Group Ltd. in Tokyo, said in a note yesterday. The company’s promotional campaign “continues to sell handsets”.

Sony fell 1.3 per cent to 1,927 yen at the close in Tokyo trading. The stock has more than doubled this year, compared with a 33 per cent gain by Japan’s benchmark Topix index. DoCoMo shares fell 1.8 per cent.

“We will respond to the needs of the market,” Yu Tominaga, a spokesman for Sony in Tokyo, said by phone. The company was targeting a wide range of customers including those upgrading from feature phones, he said.

NTT DoCoMo: Seeking to protect its own e-commerce business. — Reuters file pic

Sony posted a quarterly profit in the smartphone business after losing money a year earlier, the company said August 1. Smartphone shipments in the three months ending June rose to 9.6 million from 7.4 million a year earlier. Sony expects to sell 42 million smartphones this year.

Adding subscribers

Reviving earnings growth would depend on DoCoMo’s ability to add new users as it planned to cut costs by ¥110 billion (RM3.6 billion) in the 12 months ending March, the CFO said. While the company has 45 per cent of the Japanese market, compared with 28 per cent for second-ranked KDDI, it has the slowest growth among the top three in adding new users.

NTT DoCoMo added 172,500 users in July, compared with 225,200 at KDDI and 254,500 for third-ranked SoftBank.

The carrier fell 1.7 per cent to ¥154,400 in Tokyo trading yesterday, paring this year’s gain to 25 per cent. SoftBank has more than doubled this year while KDDI has surged 75 per cent.

DoCoMo said July 26 that operating profit fell 5.8 per cent to ¥247.5 billion in the three months ended June 30.

DoCoMo, which has more than 60 million subscribers in a nation of 127 million people, forecasts a 3.9 per cent increase in net income to ¥510 billion this fiscal year and 3.8 per cent growth in sales, the company said in a July 26 statement on its website. The carrier plans to boost handset sales to 24.5 million from 23.55 million in the year ended March 31, it said.

The company has no plan to withdraw from India, DoCoMo president Kaoru Kato said in July. The company has a stake in Tata Teleservices Maharashtra Ltd. in India. — Bloomberg