Japan’s largest mobile phone operator NTT DoCoMo’s President Ryuji Yamada said to Bloomberg TV, “it’s common sense that Apple wants to sell as many iPhones worldwide as possible and to customize it would be difficult, our stance on the iPhone remains flexible.”  Yamada took over as company’s president last month. Previously, it was believed that even though DoCoMo was in talk with Apple for iPhone launch in Japan their negotiations failed because DoCoMo wanted Apple to add their trademark applications like the i-mode (web browser) on the iPhone and Apple didn’t oblige. DoCoMo’s market share has been shrinking for past 12 months and their stocks have fallen 12 percent in the same period. Softbank the third largest mobile operator in Japan has won iPhone’s contract and will start selling iPhone 3G starting July 11th. It is estimated that they will gain more than 1 million iPhone customers in first year. Now we know why the new president of DoCoMo will be flexible to get the iPhone.
[Via Bloomberg]