DoCoMo plans to offer custom mobile phone videos

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Top Japanese mobile phone carrier NTT DoCoMo Inc plans to offer improved videos and custom services, seeking to boost profits as it faces intense competition in the saturated market.

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The new direction came as the company downgraded its forecast for the year to March after suffering slower sales.

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In a new management plan, DoCoMo said it will focus on new services and technologies rather than try to win new subscribers in Japan, where virtually everyone already has a mobile telephone.

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DoCoMo plans to develop a service that proposes videos suited to users’ tastes, in addition to offering regular entertainment videos.

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“Through acceleration of the network speed, evolution of mobile handsets, and flat-fee structure, we shall enable usage of high-volume movie contents without worrying users about payment,” the company said in a statement.

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DoCoMo said it will also continue to promote a faster infrastructure to make it a de facto international standard.

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The emphasis on videos and a flat-fee structure should increase the amount of time users spend on their mobile phones, it said.

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Through the measures, the firm said it aimed to achieve operating profit of at least 900 billion yen for the year to March 2013.

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It would mark growth from expected operating profit of 830 billion yen for this year to March 2009.

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The company downgraded its sales forecast for this fiscal year to 4.597 trillion yen, from an earlier projection of 4.768 trillion yen.

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Net profit forecast was also revised down to 495 billion, down from an earlier estimate of 503 billion yen.

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“Competition among network operators in the mobile communications market in Japan has become increasingly fierce due to price competition (and) market entry by new competitors,” DoCoMo said.

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Main rivals KDDI Corp and Softbank Corp have launched a variety of promotional plans aiming to woo customers.

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For the six months to September, DoCoMo’s net profit reached 346.7 billion yen, up from 246.5 billion yen in the same time last year.

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Half-year operating profit was 576.9 billion yen, up from 408.5 billion yen last year, on sales of 2.27 trillion yen, down from 2.33 trillion a year ago.

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