NTT DoCoMo Inc. has shelved indefinitely plans for a March
launch of a smartphone featuring a new operating system called
Tizen, dealing a blow to one of the platform's key backers--
Samsung Electronics Co.
Japan's biggest mobile carrier said Friday that the smartphone
market in Japan isn't growing fast enough for it to support a third
mobile operating system, a reference to Apple Inc.'s iOS operating
system and Google Inc.'s Android, which powers the majority of
Samsung's devices. In explaining its decision, Docomo cited
research by IDC Japan that showed the country's overall smartphone
market had grown only 2.2% in the April to September period from a
year earlier.
"The market is not big enough to support three operating systems
at this time," Docomo spokesman So Hiroki said Friday.
A Samsung spokesman wasn't immediately available for
comment.
For Samsung, one of Tizen's key backers, Docomo's latest
announcement is a setback. The South Korean tech giant runs Android
on nearly all of its smartphones, an arrangement that has so far
benefited both Samsung and Google. But as Chinese companies
introduce increasingly attractive devices that also run Android and
Google launches its own Android smartphones, Samsung has been eager
to launch a platform of its own where it can control the
relationships with app developers, as well as the streams of
revenue that app sales generate. Other backers of Tizen include
Intel Corp., France's Orange SA and the U.K.'s Vodafone Group
PLC.
For Docomo, the implications are less clear. Company executives
had eagerly awaited Tizen for years. The company, which held out
for years against supplying iPhones in Japan, saw the potential to
stop users from fleeing to iPhone-supplying rivals such as SoftBank
Corp. But in September, it decided to offer the iPhone 5C and
iPhone 5S because it couldn't ignore Japan's best-selling
smartphone, executives said. The iPhone held a 37% market share in
Japan in the six months ended Sept. 30, according to Tokyo's MM
Research Institute. Japan remains Apple's fastest-growing market
and generates the company's biggest profit margins.
Mr. Hiroki said the company will continue to work to develop
Tizen phones. Roy Sugimura, director of technology planning at
Docomo, serves as the chairman of the Tizen Association, which
oversees the project. The company also denied that its decision to
offer the iPhone in Japan had an impact on its decision to postpone
its Tizen phone.
An Apple representative wasn't immediately reachable for
comment.
This isn't the first delay for Tizen. The operating system's
backers originally said that shipments of Tizen phones would begin
in late 2012. More recently, Docomo had made plans for a Tizen
phone launch in October last year and after another delay,
expectations had been reset. Many industry executives are now
expecting some Tizen phones geared for commercial launch to be
unveiled at the Mobile World Congress, an annual industry
conference, next month.
Write to Mayumi Negishi at mayumi.negishi@wsj.com and Jonathan
Cheng at jonathan.cheng@wsj.com
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