SoftBank Mobile Corp.(ソフトバンクモバイル株式会社), previously as Vodafone K.K.(also known as Vodafone Japan) and
J-Phone, is the Japanese subsidiary company of mobile phone operator SoftBank.
Masayoshi Son is CEO and Representative Director.
Technology
SoftBank Mobile currently operates both PDC (Japanese 2G) and W-CDMA (UMTS 3G) networks. SoftBank's 3G network is
compatible with UMTS and supports transparent global roaming
for existing UMTS subscribers from other countries outside Japan. Subscribers of GSM networks having
roaming agreements with SoftBank Mobile can also roam on the SoftBank 3G network by using UMTS handsets.
History
The company was originally founded in 1991 as the mobile phone division of Japan
Telecom under the name Digital Phone (デジタルホン). J-Phone Co., Ltd. (J-フォン) was formed in 1999 by the merging
of Digital Phone Group (DPG, 3 local companies) and Digital TU-KA Group (DTG, 6 local companies, not to be confused with
TU-KA). Japan Telecom owned a stake of 45.1%. In October 2001, the British mobile phone group
Vodafone increased its share to 66.7% of Japan Telecom and 69.7% of J-Phone. On
October 1, 2003, the name of the company and the service brand
was officially changed to Vodafone.
On March 17, 2006, Vodafone Group announced it had agreed to
sell its holding of Vodafone Japan (Vodafone K.K.) to Softbank for about 1.75 trillion Japanese
yen (approximately US$ 15.1 Billion). On April 14, 2006,
SoftBank and Vodafone K. K. jointly announced, that the name of the company will be changed to
a "new, easy-to-understand and familiar" company name and brand.
It was announced in a press conference on May 18, 2006 that the
new name would be "Softbank Mobile Corp.", effective October 1, 2006. SoftBank started the rebranding around June 14, 2006.
Services and market analysis
J-Phone has been growing steadily for a decade by continuously introducing new services and enhancements such as SkyWalker for PDC, SkyMelody ringtone download, the famous Sha-Mail picture mail introduced on
the basis of camera phones developed by SHARP,
the mobile multimedia data service J-Sky modeled after NTT
DoCoMo's i-mode, and advanced Java services based on
JSCL, which are modeled after NTT DoCoMo's
Doja based i-Appli.
Recently however, this trend has been reversed and Vodafone started losing customers: In January 2005, Vodafone Japan lost
58,700 customers, and in February 2005, Vodafone Japan lost 53,200 customers (while competitors NTT
DoCoMo gained 184,400 customers and KDDI (au/KDDI) gained 163,700 customers, and
Willcom gained 35,000).
Vodafone changed the name of its multimedia data services from J-Sky to Vodafone
live!, and used J-Sky's principles and technologies and business models to introduce Vodafone live! in Vodafone's other
markets. Thus Vodafone live! has its origin in J-Phone's J-Sky.
Vodafone Japan recently changed the page description language of Vodafone live! to the
WAP page description language.
While as of February 2005, DoCoMo's FOMA 3G service has attracted
10 million subscribers, and KDDI's 3G service has attracted over 17 million subscribers, Vodafone's 3G service only attracted
527,300 subscribers. Vodafone-3G has not acquired many subscribers because Vodafone cut back investments in 3G services in Japan
in 2002/3, and therefore handsets largely do not fully match needs and preferences of Japanese customers.
As of end February 2005, Vodafone Japan had 15.1 million customers, and by end of October 2005, the number of subscribers had
fallen by 103,100 to 14.996 million, while during the same period NTT-DoCoMo had gained 1.65 million customers and KDDI/AU had
gained 1.82 million customers.
As of end February 2005, Vodafone-Live! had 12.907 million subscribers in Japan, and by end of October 2005 the number of
Vodafone-Live! subscribers had fallen by 138,000 to 12,769,600.
In March 2006, Vodafone were discussing the sale of their Vodafone Japan unit to Softbank in
Japan. Vodafone has been unable to satisfy customers, as Japanese users tend to have preferences not seen in other markets.
Handsets had user interfaces that differed too much from the Japanese interface, and did not have as many features as competing
companies. This led to losing many customers and decided that it is no longer profitable.
3G: As of end October 2005, NTT-DoCoMo has 17.6 million 3G customers, KDDI/AU has 19.8 million 3G
customers, and Vodafone-Japan has 1.9 million 3G customers, i.e. Vodafone-Japan gained about 4.8% of Japan's 3G market.
Timeline
- 1991-07: Tokyo Digital Phone established
- 1994-04: J-Phone starts PDC cellular service in the 1.5 GHz band, 10 MHz bandwidth
- 1997-11: J-Phone launches SkyWalker SMS service designed by Aldiscon and Ericsson for PDC
- 1998-11: J-Phone launches SkyMelody ringtone download service
- 1999-12: J-Phone launches J-Sky wireless Internet service ten months after NTT DoCoMo's i-mode, which was launched in
February 1999.
- 2000-11: J-Phone launches Sha-Mail (写メール) picture messaging service using the world's first camera phones developed by
SHARP
- 2001-06: J-Phone launches Java service with JSCL library
- 2002-12: J-Phone launches W-CDMA 3G service the first time
- 2003-10: J-Phone company name is changed to Vodafone, and J-Sky name is changed to Vodafone live!. Vodafone launches a
Japan-nationwide Beckham campaign
- 2004-10: Vodafone relaunches the 3G services in Japan a second time offering mobile phone handsets designed primarily
for the European markets
- 2005 Summer: Vodafone changes management and relaunches 3G services in Japan a third time
- 2006-03-17: Vodafone officially announced it had agreed to sell Vodafone Japan
(Vodafone KK) to Softbank for a total of 1.75 trillion Japanese yen (approx US$ 15.1 Billion) in one of the largest M&A
transactions in Japan to date
- 2006-04-14: SoftBank and Vodafone K. K. jointly
announced, that the name of the company will be changed to a "new, easy-to-understand and familiar" company name and brand.
Masayoshi Son became CEO and Representative Director of Vodafone K. K.
- 2006-05-01: Headquarters moved from Atago Hills to Shiodome to integrate operations
with other SoftBank group companies
- 2006-05-18: SoftBank announced that the name of the
company will be changed to "Softbank Mobile Corp." effective October 1, 2006
- 2006-06-16: SoftBank started rebranding "Vodafone"
to "Softbank."
- 2006-10-01: Vodafone Japan company name is changed "SoftBank Mobile Corp."
External links
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