SoftBank Mobile Corp. (ソフトバンクモバイル株式会社 Sofutobanku Mobairu Kabushikigaisha), 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.
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SoftBank Mobile operates W-CDMA (UMTS 3G) network ("SoftBank 3G"). SoftBank's 3G network is compatible with UMTS and supports transparent global roaming for existing UMTS subscribers from other countries.
The company was originally founded in 1981 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. The growth and success of the company during this period is due in large part to then president Bill Morrow.[1]
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.
J-PHONE grew 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, modeled after NTT DoCoMo's DoJa based i-appli.
However, Vodafone lost 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 au by 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 had attracted 10 million subscribers, and KDDI's 3G service had attracted over 17 million subscribers, Vodafone's 3G service only attracted 527,300 subscribers. Vodafone 3G failed to attract subscribers because Vodafone cut back investments in 3G services in Japan in 2002/3; handsets did not fully match needs and preferences of Japanese customers.
At the 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.
At the end of February 2005, Vodafone live! had 12.907 million subscribers in Japan. By end of October 2005 the number of Vodafone live! subscribers had fallen by 138,000 to 12,769,600.
In March 2006, Vodafone began discussing the sale of the Vodafone Japan unit to SoftBank. Vodafone was 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 the loss of more customers and Vodafone's decision that the market was no longer profitable.
3G: At the end of October 2005, NTT-DoCoMo had 17.6 million 3G customers, KDDI/AU had 19.8 million 3G customers, and Vodafone-Japan had 1.9 million 3G customers, i.e. Vodafone-Japan gained about 4.8% of Japan's 3G market.
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