Vodafone K.K. President Shiro Tsuda has said the company will stop offering new second-generation cell phone handsets in 2005 to force customers to switch to 3G handsets.

"Vodafone will offer its last 2G handset next year and no more 2G later," Tsuda said recently. Vodafone is the Japanese unit of British mobile phone service company Vodafone Group PLC.

In the Japanese mobile phone service market, Vodafone has lagged behind rivals NTT DoCoMo Inc. and KDDI Corp. in shifting to 3G handsets. Of some 15 million Vodafone customers, only about 300,000 are 3G handset users.

Vodafone will encourage customers to shift to the 3G handsets, and will concentrate business resources on such services, Tsuda said.

Vodafone would like to see half of its customers using 3G handsets in three years, he said.

Tsuda, who took up the presidency at Vodafone earlier this month after serving as executive vice president at NTT DoCoMo, said he hoped to expand music distribution for 3G services.

"Music distribution is one of the attractive menu items that must be offered," he said.

He also indicated that Vodafone might focus on new handsets for global use, which the company has recently introduced.

"The introduction has worked to dramatically reduce handset procurement costs," he said.

The first model for global use might not satisfy Japanese customers, but future models will be improved, he said.