SoftBank Mobile Rockin in May

When the TCA subscriber numbers came out on Thursday the champange corks were popping in Shiodome. For the first time ever the number 3 operator (J-Phone, then Vodafone and now SoftBank) gained the most net customers (162,400) on the month beating KDDI’s 138,500 and nearly double DoCoMo’s 82,700. While their Yahoo! portal also added more clients than EZweb and i-mode the company also managed to boost their 3G accounts up by nearly 500,000 month-on-month to total 8.6 million or 50% of their total subscriber base.

According to this announcement SoftBank claimed their flat-rate voice “White Plan” package has secured 5 million subscribers (1 million in May alone) since it was introduced in January this year. At this pace it would seem quite likely they will surpass the 10 million 3G customer barrier by their 1st anniversary on October 1st. Pushing forward, the company also announced on Thursday two new handset models - the 912SH and 705NK - from their summer line-up are now available.