DoCoMo--Japan's Wireless Tsunami: How One Mobile Telecom Created a New Market and Became a Global Force

256 Pages·2002·8.21 MB·English

by  John Beck, Mitchell Wade

DoCoMo
JAPAN’S WIRELESS TSUNAMI
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DoCoMo
JAPAN’S WIRELESS TSUNAMI
How One Mobile Telecom Created a
New Market and Became a Global Force
JOHN BECK
AND
MITCHELL WADE
American Management Association
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Beck, John C.
DoCoMo : Japan’s wireless tsunami / John C. Beck and Mitchell E. Wade.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-8144-0753-6
1. DoCoMo—History. 2. Cellular telephone services
industry—Japan—History. I. Wade, Mitchell E. II. Title.
HE9715.J3 B435 2002
384.3’06’552—dc21 2002008312
© 2003 John Beck and Mitchell Wade
All rights reserved.
Printed in the United States of America.
This publication may not be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system,
or transmitted in whole or in part,
in any form or by any means, electronic,
mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise,
without the prior written permission of AMACOM,
a division of American Management Association,
1601 Broadway, New York, NY 10019.
Printing number
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
For Roger
—JB
For my parents
—MW
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C O N T E N T S
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ix
Chapter One: Love . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
Chapter Two: Inequality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
Chapter Three: Impatience . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73
Chapter Four: Luck . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103
Chapter Five: Fun . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147
Chapter Six: Strength . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 193
Afterword . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 213
Appendix A: Intimacy and M-Commerce . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 219
Appendix B: Interview with Kouji Ohboshi . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 225
Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 233
vii
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I N T R O D U C T I O N
We have a confession to make: This isn’t the book we thought we were
going to write. And if you’re looking for a safe, detailed history of an
exceptional company, this isn’t it.
Let us explain. NTT DoCoMo is a truly exceptional company.
Largely unknown outside Japan, it has created more wealth in recent
years than almost any other company in the world.(The Stern Stewart
Wealth Added Index [WAI] compares share-price increases and divi-
dends to the cost of equity for 5069 firms worldwide, from June 1996
to June 2001. DoCoMo is the only Asian firm in the WAI top ten, and
one of only three from outside the United States.)
Originally spun off from a hidebound bureaucracy, DoCoMo was
the kind of startup that might simply have faded away. Instead, it has
become a true global superpower. It hasover 30 million paying Inter-
net customers—as many as America Online—but got there five times
faster. Its technology is a full generation ahead of anything in the
United States or Europe. And it is rapidly acquiring stakes in every
major global market. Insiders believe this Japanese powerhouse could
dominate the new economy, just as Sony and Toyota have dominated
the old one.
So the elements are there for the book you might expect: a classic
(if conventional) high-tech success story. What’s more, this is clearly a
success story that matters, truly, to the entire industrialized world. For
some time now, just about every telecom you can think of has been
investing and positioning and preparing for the Big Mobile Commerce
Boom. And many other businesses have been watching closely, because
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