DoCoMo to buy more foreign companies to boost sales

NTT DoCoMo Inc, Japan’s biggest mobile-phone company, may buy more companies overseas to widen access to entertainment content and ecommerce operations to help boost sales abroad nine-fold in four years.

“We will consider acquisitions if necessary,” chief executive officer Kaoru Kato said in an interview. The carrier will also consider boosting the use of wireless networks it controls overseas to deliver animated films, games and music to smartphone and tablet computer users in countries including France, the 61-year-old CEO said, without elaborating.

“We first need to succeed with this distribution business at home, before taking it abroad,” Kato said.

To help narrow the gap with the iPhone, Do-CoMo, which controls 47 percent of Japan's wireless market, will introduce 16 smartphone models including Samsung Electronics Co’s Galaxy series by August, it said in May. The carrier aims to sell 13 million smartphones this fiscal year in Japan, rising from 8.82 million a year earlier. Smartphones make it easier for users to watch video, surf the Internet and listen to music because they have larger touch- screens than conventional mobile phones.

“The iPhone is very attractive,” Kato said. Still, “our strategy remains to fight back with handsets” operated by Google Inc’s Android. Docomo has already acquired at least one European partner to add content for mobile distribution. The carrier said in May it agreed to pay as much as $273 million for Buongiorno SpA, an Italian mobile-content provider. DoCoMo plans to complete the transaction on July 18, it said on July 11. In India, DoCoMo owns 26 percent of Tata Teleservices Ltd, the sixth-largest carrier by subscribers as of May.