Docomo tries again to push feature phone users to smartphones

Docomo has increased the discount to ¥20,000 on it's two "must have" phones, the Galaxy S4 and the Xperia A. The two discounts together can lower the total cost to the user to just ¥5,000.

Of course there's a catch; you'll have to have been a customer for 10 years or never owned a smartphone:

• The "Thank you for 10 years" discount: ¥10,000
• The "First smartphone" discount: ¥10,000 (upgrade from i-mode feature phone)

Obviously, these are targeting the crowd still clutching desperately to their feature phones. These same users tend to be long-time users of Docomo. Docomo has been getting killed by KDDI and Softbank, with 1.4 million mobile numbers ported out in 2012 alone. Around the world, Android and especially Samsung are taking the market from Apple's iPhone — except in Japan where the iPhone still dominates.

Scary for Docomo, that all those walled garden, loyal i-mode users who pay for the "value" added services might be wooed away by the iPhone.

However, there are also positive signs. For example, the year-over-year contract numbers increased for the January-March quarter after Docomo released the Xperia Z. Kato said they "try many things based on the customer response during January to March, and the summer model will be a trigger".

The GALAXY S4 (SC-04E) includes a 5 inch organic EL full HD display(1080 × 1920 pixels). The black and white models went on sale May 23, and the "Blue Arctic" domestic-only version will be released in mid June.

The Xperia A (SO-04E) is the domestic version of the Xperia ZR that Sony announced on May 13. It is 4.6 inches with a 720 × 1280 pixels display. The Xperia includes a number of "galapagos" features, such as water resistance, one segTV and Docomo's NOTTV It was released on May 17 in 4 different colors.

See here for more [J]