Nokia tying up with NTT DoCoMo for Japanese MVNO?

So Nokia has a 40-odd percent stake in the world's handset market. You know where that insanely high number isn't coming from? Japan, where the Finnish giant holds less than a 1-percent share of phone sales as it competes against domestic models from Sharp, NEC, Fujitsu, and others who've traditionally ruled over FOMA with an iron fist. We think that we can probably chalk that up to the simple fact that Nokia doesn't produce many (okay, any) wide VGA flip phones with one-seg TV tuners, but they're thinking bigger -- way bigger -- to the tune of a self-branded MVNO that'd operate on NTT DoCoMo's expansive network. A Japanese paper is reporting that the virtual network will launch next spring, initially with high-end models designed to establish name recognition in a market where it currently has none; Vertu is just starting to set up shop over there, so we're assuming they don't mean ridiculously high-end, but high-end in the sense that the spec sheets won't get laughed right out of town.

[Via Unwired View, thanks Robin of Loxley]