66% of ex-NTT DoCoMo users reportedly choose iPhone
One of the rather unsung points TUAW posted after the Apple Event on Tuesday is that Apple had inked a deal for Japan's leading mobile carrier -- NTT DoCoMo -- to carry the iPhone for the first time. While that doesn't sound like a big deal, it stands to help out NTT DoCoMo a lot. The company has 61 million subscribers, but churn (subscribers leaving to go elsewhere) has been a problem.
How much of a problem? Well, research firm Kantar Japan says that a whopping two-thirds of those who have left DoCoMo for greener pastures have done so to buy an iPhone. The deal is big for DoCoMo, which formerly dominated the Japanese mobile market and has seen its market share shrink. But it's also a big deal for Apple, which now has full carrier distribution in the island nation.
Deutsche Bank analyst Chris Whitmore thinks that an additional 10 million iPhones couid be sold in Japan in 2014, with most of them being the higher end iPhone 5s. That's enough to add about $2 to Apple's earnings per share for 2014, just from adding one carrier.
