The President of NTT DoCoMo has stated that the company may miss its end of fiscal year 3G subscriber target for the second year running. DoCoMo had expected to have signed up 1.38 million FOMA subscribers by 31 March 2003. However with just 127,400 customers at the end of July, DoCoMo would have to see a significant increase in its monthly take-up rate to have any hope of meeting its target. In March this year FOMA subscriptions were 61,000 short of their 150,000 target.
Since its launch in October 2001 FOMA has added an average of 11,581 customers per month and during the second quarter of 2002 its monthly net additions dropped sharply from 16,100 in April to 6,800 in May and just 2,200 in June. This decline came largely in response to the April launch of KDDI’s rival 3G service, which is priced lower than FOMA and also provides superior coverage and backwards compatibility with second generation CDMA services. Average monthly subscriptions for KDDI’s CDMA2000 service are running at 410,975.