Japan's NTT DoCoMo profit up on smartphone sales

Leading Japanese mobile phone carrier NTT DoCoMo said Friday net profit in the fiscal first quarter to June inched higher on strong smartphone sales. The firm said that for the April-June quarter net profit stood at 164.30 billion yen ($2.1 billion), up 3.5 percent year on year, while sales rose 2.4 percent to 1.07 trillion yen. "Active sales of smartphones have increased revenue from subscribers expanding their use of data services," it said. For the year to March 2013, the company kept unchanged its forecast of net profit at 557 billion yen on sales of 4.45 trillion yen.