January Carrier Stats Released

The latest subscriber figures were announced today with good news for SoftBank Mobile and what must be disappointing results for DoCoMo while KDDI continues to lead the pack in over-all performance again in January. We had mentioned that many industry watchers were expecting SoftBanks new flat-rate voice plan - announced in early January - would have an positive impact, and it certainly did. Most surprising was the small month-on-month loss of i-mode customers, the second time in 3 months, for the incumbent.

SBM, the former Vodafone Japan operator, added 150,000 new customers in January for approx. 30% increase over their totals in December against DoComo’s 7,000 new subs compared to nearly 90,000 for big D in the previous month. It’s also the second time since number portability that DoCoMo posted a net loss (-2,400) i-mode subscibers which had gained +67,000 in December 2006. As mentioned, DoCoMo’s numbers for March and April should improve dramatically considering their latest handset line-up and increased marketing campaigns.

The success story continues to be KDDI’s Au offering. The company has consistently out-performed the competition with yet another month of impressive new subscriber additions at +208,400 *the company gained over 430,000 new contracts however their Tu-Ka unit lost just over 230,000* while the EZ-Web portal added 260,600.

One last note of interest, if we include the rapidly declining subscribers of KDDI’s Tu-Ka division (-233,000 in January to total 1.2mln) and DoCoMo’s PHS network which is not accepting new contracts and on-track to shutting down (-23,000 to 506,800 users) the grand total of mobile phone contracts in Japan tipped over the 100 mln mark last month! Full details via: Telecom Carriers Assoc.