There are some reports from Japan which suggest that Nokia is planning to take a leap into the unknown, as the Finnish company is planning to start its own mobile network in Japan that will offer handsets as well as monthly plans behind them.
Yomiuri Shimbun (a newspaper) says that Nokia is about to start a mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) service and will use an infrastructure leased from NTT DoCoMo in February next year.
But the report says that the MVNO is not going to compete with existing operators in Japan directly and it will leverage Nokia’s Vertu brand to target the extreme high end of the market.
This new venture will most probably be irrelevant to ordinary Japanese phone users, as the Vertu handsets will be available with the price tag of ¥5 million (£35,000) each.
However, Nokia is quite hopeful that the new move will increase Nokia’s brand awareness in Japan where the Finns is not a significant phone manufacturer. In the rest of the world, it sold 437 million phones during the last year.
