NTT DoCoMo, the number one mobile carrier in Japan, said recently that it would be interested in making a deal with Apple to carry the iPhone. The president of NTT DoCoMo, Katoru Kato, said that he would be willing to add the iPhone to NTT DoCoMo’s lineup of smartphones if the two companies could come up with a “mutually beneficial contract.”
Apple requires that carriers offering its devices sell a fixed amount per year. Kato said that his company would be able to handle the quota if iPhones account for about 20%-30% of its overall smartphone sales. By the end of 2015, NTT DoCoMo expects to bring in more than $11 billion from Android-related e-commerce sales.
News of NTT DoCoMo’s interest in the iPhone comes around the same time as it suffered from recent subscriber losses. Japan’s number one carrier lost more than 40,000 subscribers in November as smaller mobile carriers snatched them up with the iPhone 5. This was the company’s biggest decline yet, and its first drop in over five years.
As of December 2012, DoCoMo held 61 million cellular subscriptions, which is almost half of Japan’s entire population.
Image Credit: SiliconANGLE
