Actress Maki Horikita, Docomo CEO Ryuji Yamada, Actor Ken Watanabe
Back in October when I dropped in on Docomo’s Winter phone lineup event, one of the most interesting statements made by its CEO Ryuji Yamada was that he felt Docomo can “fully compete” with the Apple’s (NASDAQ:AAPL) iPhone 4S. Looking at his comments today in discussion with The Wall Street Journal, we get a somewhat clearer picture on why the iPhone remains a competing phone rather than a partner.
While the report quotes him as saying that Docomo has not given up hope of offering the iPhone, but expressed reservations about volume:
If the introduction of the iPhone results in the mass majority of our products occupied by the iPhone, then that’s a scenario that’s difficult to us to swallow.
Another sticking point appears to be Docomo’s in-house applications like its e-wallet and i-mode mail service, which Yamada says are important for Japanese customers — though Apple prefers and insists upon a cleaner experience.
Speaking as a Docomo subscriber, I’d like to see an iPhone come to the network one of these days. But given the recent growth of Android smartphones, I think that as long as the company has a good selection of alternatives (see Samsung Galaxy S II LTE, and the upcoming Galaxy Nexus) then it should be in good shape.
But having said that, if the iPhone were offered on Docomo’s network, I can’t really imagine myself going near any of those Android offerings. But that’s just me…
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