DoCoMo's Foma Customers Add Nothing to ARPU
With limited coverage and poor battery life NTT DoCoMo's Foma 3G service isn't enjoying the same success as the company's wildly popular i-mode service. In theory 3G services are supposed to enable exciting new services that help carriers boost ARPU. But the world's first major 3G network is experiencing exactly the opposite. With its small customer based Foma is just not attracting users which in turn keeps application developers away. The result is that while Foma ARPU started out high but since launch it has dropped by more than 25% and is now below i-mode's ARPU.
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