NTT DoCoMo - Investments Outside Japan

Investments Outside Japan

NTT Docomo has a wide range of foreign investments. However, NTT Docomo was not successful in investing in foreign carriers. Docomo had invested very large multi-billion dollar amounts in KPN, KT Freetel, AT&T Wireless, and had to write-off or sell all these investments in foreign carriers. As a result, Docomo booked a total of about US$ 10 billion in losses, while during the same time Docomo's Japan operations were profitable.

In December 2007, NTT Docomo and KT Freetel jointly invested 200 million USD for a total of 33% stake in U Mobile Malaysia.

In November 2008, NTT Docomo bought a 26% stake in Tata Teleservices for 2.7 billion USD, the number 6 in Indian telecom industry and owned by the Tata group. India is the world's fastest-growing cellular market, adding as many as 9 million new customers a month. Tata Teleservices (which sells under the brand Tata Indicom and Virgin Mobile India) has 80 million subscribers as of October 2010. Though Tata Indicom is a CDMA based operator, they bagged GSM licenses as well, and the NTT Docomo-Tata venture is focused on GSM operation (called Tata DOCOMO). The Tata DOCOMO service was commercially launched in India in June 2009. Tata DOCOMO had about 32.82 million users at the end of June 2010.

They have also taken over Guamcell, among others, and so are now the main wireless operator in Guam.

Docomo is working on implementing its FeliCa-based payment system, called iD, overseas. It has already launched the system in Guam, as well as Shanghai and Beijing, China (however, as of November 2010, it has withdrawn iD terminals from all merchants in China).