DoCoMo’s 700i handsets: Starting the big 3G push

The popularity of NTT DoCoMo's 3G FOMA service has been starting to hurt recently--those high-end handsets cost it a lot in subsidies, and with most new subscribers not in the high-roller category, the news for the bottom line is less than rosy. Getting everyone over to 3G while at the same time keeping profits buoyant requires something cheaper and less extravagant on the handset front, so the new 700i series dumbs down the feature set to the “basics”: megapixel cameras, videophone, AAC audio playback (plus iTunes sync for some models), and HTML email with support for 500kb file attachments in all models. Yeah, we thought "basic" meant something different too.

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(Crossposted to Engadget)