STOCKHOLM  - Swedish telecoms equipment maker Ericsson will start selling Internet-surfing I-mode mobile phones in Japan in November.

The new phone would be similar to the existing T28 model, but would have a bigger screen.

It is already under production in Japan, where I-mode, the Japanese standard equivalent of the European WAP (Wireless Application Protocol) mobile Internet phones, is a roaring success.

To secure a foothold in the Japanese-producer dominated market the launch will be in cooperation with the leading mobile operator NTT DoCoMo (news - web sites), which now has 12 million clients and expects to raise the number to 17 million next year.

``We must be here to keep up with the rest,'' Dagens Industri quoted Staffan Soderqvist, head of Ericsson's mobile telephones division in Japan as saying.

``The trend this year is a telephone with a color display so we expect that 90 percent of all Japanese telephones next year will have a color screen,'' he said. Ericsson's phone would not have one, however, because it would have delayed the launch.

The new phone is an attempt to tap into the huge Japanese mobile phone market, which Ericsson estimates at 45 million handsets next year, and help the Swedish firm's loss-making mobile phones division to return to profit.

Now 32 percent of the mobile phones sold in Japan come from Panasonic, 16 percent from Mitsubishi and another 16 from NEC. The world's biggest handset producer Nokia, which launched its I-mode phone in Japan in May, has three percent. 

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