New York, June 24, 2008 - NTT DOCOMO USA, Inc., established in November 1999 as a wholly owned subsidiary of Japan’s NTT DOCOMO, Inc., today announced the appointment of a new CEO.
Masaki Yoshikawa will resign as President and Chief Executive Officer of the Company, effective as of June 30, 2008 and Masaaki Maeda will take over Yoshikawa’s role as President and Chief Executive Officer, effective July 1, 2008.
Masaaki Maeda began his career in the Japanese telecommunications industry in April 1983 at NTT (Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation) in the Technical Development Department. In March 1994, he moved to NTT DOCOMO, the mobile arm of NTT which was spun off from its parent company in 1992. During his career with NTT DOCOMO in Japan, he held a variety of managerial positions in Network Planning, Personnel, General Affairs, and Mobile Multimedia Planning. He joined the New York Office of NTT DOCOMO USA as Senior Vice President in July 2002.
In 2004, Masaaki Maeda launched NTT DOCOMO USA’s first service in North America, called “namikiiteru®” which is a Public Wireless LAN Access service for Japanese-speaking residents of the USA. It was followed in October 2005 by the introduction of “namimail®”, a software application which allows users to read and write Japanese and displays simplified and traditional Chinese, Hangul (Korean) and Japanese characters on BlackBerry® handheld devices. This has contributed tremendously to the global mobility of bilingual business people.
Masaaki Maeda holds both a Bachelor of Electrical Engineering and a Master of Electrical Engineering from the Tokyo Institute of Technology. In addition, he earned an MBA at the MIT Sloan School of Management in June 2002.
・namikiteru and namimail are registered trademarks of NTT DOCOMO USA,Inc in the United States.
・The BlackBerry and RIM families of related marks, images and symbols are the exclusive properties and trademarks of Research In Motion Limited.
