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The Nikkei business daily broke, Reuters reported and Phandroid is further relaying that DoCoMo – Japan’s largest mobile carrier – is jointly creating an Android based handset for release in 2009. They’re teaming up with manufacturer KTF, a company of which they have 10% ownership.
Details on the potential/possible/probable handset are sparse… or perhaps non-existent would be a better way of putting it. The two companies have combined forces to keep down costs and have done so on at least 2 occassions. They say the use of the Android OS will save them an additional 20% – savings they will pass on to consumers. Nice!
The phone would be made available in both Japan and South Korea at some unnamed date in 2009. DoCoMo is a member of the Open Handset Alliance so this would make perfect sense, however the Reuters article warned: A DoCoMo spokesman said the company had not yet decided to launch an Android-based phone next year.
But if you ask me, thats just PR talk for, “leave us alone until we’re ready to officially leak information to bloggers.”
[Via Reuters]
Looks like the rumor is false:
http://www.unwiredview.com/2008/11/19/ktf-no-were-not-making-an-android-smartphone-with-ntt-docomo/
Why would they want to do that. Mobile phones are already way advanced than the ones here in the US.
what feature will they add to android?
I don’t see any reason for DoCoMo and KTF to do that.
They both have very unique service environments of their own and developing a common Android phone to satisfy both’s needs will not give them any advantages.
More over, KT has a phone manufacturer subsidiary company named KTFT however, they only do Qualcomm based feature phones not smartphone. Also KTF does not have any competencies or experiences for Android yet. If this news involved SEC, LG or Japanese venders, it would have made more sense.