Nikkei: DoCoMo to sell Nokia handsets

The Nihon Keizai Shimbun is reporting that DoCoMo is to procure low-cost FOMA handsets from Nokia, to go on sale within the year. According to the paper the handsets would cost up to 30% less to DoCoMo than those from domestic manufacturers. They would be no-frills models that would retain the core functions of high-speed data, web browsing and videophone calls. The current handset lineup centres on the fairly high end, so it would make sense to have some budget models if the goal is to get everyone moving from 2G to 3G quickly.

No comment from DoCoMo on whether this is true or not, as far as we're aware. Anecdotally, we would note that the Nokia engineer we were chatting to recently here clammed up immediately when we asked him what he was doing in Tokyo, and would say no more than that he was a Symbian developer. DoCoMo, incidentally, has stipulated that Symbian or Linux be used for its handsets. We'd hesitate to draw a conclusion on the potential significance of that at the moment, though.

[Nikkei Shimbun (Japanese)]