Japanese consumers crowded select shops in Tokyo today to try out the world's first commercial third generation (3G) mobile phone service launched by Japan's mobile phone leader NTT DoCoMo.
Users can access any Internet site, send and receive e-mails, see moving images of who they are talking to, take photographs with their handset and play electronic games.
4,000 handsets had been snatched up in the first day of sales, said a DoCoMo spokesman. Analysts had warned the relatively high price of the service could keep punters away, but they described the number sold so far as respectable.
About 1,600 standard handsets from NEC, priced at around $341, and 1,600 Panasonic videophones had been sold. 800 Panasonic PC-card mobile adaptors were also sold.
Named FOMA (freedom of mobile multi-media access), the service will initially be restricted to a 20 mile radius around the centre of Tokyo and several specified zones in the capital. NTT DoCoMo, Japan's first mobile phone operator, aims to sell 150,000 handsets by March 2001 and to sign up six million 3G subscribers by March 2004.
The commercial launch of FOMA was delayed in May by technical problems. Even now the downloading of music and videoclips will not be available until the first half of 2002.
It is expected that most initial users will continue to surf the web using DoCoMo's current i-mode service, which they will be able to access at some 40 times the speed for two-thirds the price of using the new phones.
As of September 24 DoCoMo had 27.6 million subscribers to its i-mode service, with limited email and internet capabilities, of which 6.9 million had Java-enabled handsets that can download small programmes.
