TOKYO, Japan, September 26, 2025 - (JCN Newswire) - NTT DOCOMO, INC. announced today that it has achieved third place globally in the RecSys Challenge 2025, a premier international data science competition held as part of the ACM Conference on Recommender Systems (RecSys)*1.

The RecSys Challenge brings together leading researchers and engineers from around the world to tackle real-world business problems using advanced data science and machine learning techniques. A total of 416 teams participated in this year's competition, which ran from March 10 to June 30, 2025. The award ceremony and technical presentations were held during the RecSys Conference 2025 in Prague, Czech Republic, from September 22 to 26.

The 2025 challenge focused on addressing the rising costs of developing and maintaining AI models by creating Universal Behavioral Profiles (UBPs)—generalized user purchasing behavior profiles that can be applied across multiple use cases, such as predicting product purchases or customer churn on e-commerce platforms.

DOCOMO developed a hybrid solution that combined statistical features derived from user purchase frequency, intervals, and other behavioral patterns with graph-based AI models designed to capture complex relationships between users and products. By integrating these complementary approaches, the company achieved significantly higher predictive accuracy across all six evaluation tasks—three open and three hidden—demonstrating the robustness and versatility of its method.

In August 2025, DOCOMO also received two special awards at the KDD CUP 2025*2, another world-leading data mining competition organized by ACM SIGKDD. The theme involved generating correct answers for image-based queries. DOCOMO modified image-generation AI models to incorporate external information sources such as image and text search, thereby preventing incorrect responses and delivering top-tier performance in two of the four assigned tasks.

Details of DOCOMO's approaches for both competitions will be published on the DOCOMO Developer Blog*3 around December 2025.

With a large team of data scientists and extensive expertise in big data analytics, DOCOMO continues to apply cutting-edge AI research to address a wide range of business challenges, from developing docomo Sense®*4, a customer intelligence engine for advanced ad targeting, to building large-scale cross-service recommendation engines*5, implementing AI-powered recommendations across both online and offline retail experiences*6, and expanding applications in domestic and international digital out-of-home (DOOH) advertising*7,*8. Leveraging its globally recognized strengths in problem design and big data analysis, DOCOMO will further advance innovative AI technologies to enhance personalized customer experiences and deliver new value to society.

*1 A data analysis competition held at the RecSys Conference 2025, an international academic conference organized by SIGCHI (Special Interest Group on Computer-Human Interaction), a subcommittee of the ACM (Association for Computing Machinery) focusing on Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) in the field of computer science.
*2 A data analysis competition held at the KDD Conference, an international academic conference organized by SIGKDD (Special Interest Group on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining), a subcommittee of the ACM (Association for Computing Machinery) focusing on data science in the field of computer science.
*3 https://nttdocomo-developers.jp/ (Japanese only)
*4 https://ssw.web.docomo.ne.jp/marketing/strengths/sense/ (Japanese only)
*5 NTT DOCOMO Technical Journal VOL.33 NO.1 (Japanese only)
https://www.docomo.ne.jp/corporate/technology/rd/technical_journal/bn/vol33_1/002.html
*6 NTT DOCOMO Technical Journal VOL.25 NO.4
https://www.docomo.ne.jp/english/corporate/technology/rd/technical_journal/bn/vol25_4/001.html
*7 https://corp.liveboard.co.jp/en/
*8 Announced on July 29, 2024: DOCOMO, DatVietVAC and DatVietOOH to Form JV, “Vie BOARD,” for Digital Out-Of-Home Business Supported with Location-based Data in Vietnam.
https://www.docomo.ne.jp/english/info/media_center/pr/2024/0729_00.html

About NTT DOCOMO

NTT DOCOMO, Japan's leading mobile operator with over 90 million subscribers, is one of the global leaders in 3G, 4G and 5G mobile network technologies. Under the slogan “Bridging Worlds for Wonder & Happiness,” DOCOMO is actively collaborating with global partners to expand its business scope from mobile services to comprehensive solutions, aiming to deliver unsurpassed value and drive innovation in technology and communications, ultimately to support positive change and advancement in global society. https://www.docomo.ne.jp/english/

For more details, please visit: https://www.docomo.ne.jp/english/info/media_center/pr/2025/0926_00.html

Copyright © 2025 ACN Newswire. All rights reserved. A division of Asia Corporate News Network.