Kaoru Kato
Profile
Performance in office
Tenure
Tenure
Background
He joined Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Public Corporation in April 1977. He became Managing Director and head of corporate strategy planning at NTT DOCOMO Kansai in July 2007, and moved to DOCOMO itself as Director, Managing Executive Officer and head of the Corporate Strategy and Planning Department in June 2008. From April 2009 he also headed the Mobile Society Research Institute. He moved from a regional company to corporate planning at headquarters and, after four years heading that department, became President in June 2012.
Selection
In June 2012 he succeeded Ryuji Yamada as President. When the iPhone 5, released that year, supported LTE, KDDI and SoftBank also stepped up base station investment, and DOCOMO's strengths in coverage reliability and speed no longer set it apart. Five years after the iPhone first went on sale in Japan, DOCOMO alone did not carry it, and with customers leaving for rivals through number portability, its share had fallen from over 50% to just over 40%.
Initiatives
In May 2013 the company launched its "two-top strategy," concentrating sales on two of its 11 summer models and abandoning its policy of treating all models equally. Even so, losses through number portability continued, at 135,000 in May and 146,000 in June, and from September 20 it began selling the iPhone 5s and 5c, giving up the go-it-alone approach it had held since i-mode. In October that year it changed its name to NTT DOCOMO. On November 27, 2015, it decided to withdraw from NOTTV, the smartphone television broadcasting service launched in April 2012.
Career
Career
Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Public Corporation
| Date | Position |
|---|---|
| Apr 1977 | Joined |
NTT DoCoMo Kansai
| Date | Position |
|---|---|
| Jul 2007 | Managing Director, General Manager, Corporate Planning Department |
NTT DOCOMO
| Date | Position |
|---|---|
| Jun 2008 | Director, Managing Executive Officer, General Manager, Corporate Planning Department |
| Apr 2009 | Director, Managing Executive Officer, General Manager, Corporate Planning Department and Director, Mobile Social Laboratory |
| Jul 2009 | Director, Managing Executive Officer, General Manager, Corporate Planning Department |
| Jun 2012 | Representative Director, President |
| Jun 2016 | Stepped down as President |