Japan Market
Japan Market

Japan Market

Goldman to Raise Stake in eMobile

According to this report on Reuters, EAccess plans to sell some of its stake in the newly launched eMobile unit to Goldman Sachs. The share sale would also see the firm change from a consolidated subsidiary of EAccess into an affiliate thus reducing losses the parent company would be required to book in group earnings. Emobile also appointed CFO Eric Gan as president and chief operating officer, having been managing director of Goldman before founding the telecom operator.

Casio Shares Tumble 16 Percent

Shares of Casio Computer Co. fell the most in 32 years after the company missed its profit target and unveiled plans to expand in the crowded mobile-phone market. The stock tumbled by the 400-yen daily limit, or 16 percent, to 2,025 yen in Tokyo, erasing $931 million from its market value. Brokerages including HSBC Holdings Plc downgraded the stock after the company reported annual profit of 25.1 billion yen ($209 million), missing its own estimate by 9 percent.

Boingo Roaming into Tokyo

Boingo Wireless announced a roaming agreement with livedoor Co. Ltd., to add the company’s central Tokyo Wi-Fi network to their 60,000 global hotspot collection. This agreement marks the second Asian hot zone to join the Boingo Roaming System the first was citywide WIFLY network in Taipei, which added in July 2006. According to the press release livedoor’s network covers 80% of the outdoor area located within the Yamanote Line with thousands of power-pole mounted access points.

SoftBank Announces FYE 2006 Results

Softbank Corp. announced their FYE 2006 results yesterday indicating that the parent companies fourth-quarter operating profit more than doubled YoY after buying Vodafone mobile-phone unit last spring. The entire presentation video is available in English Here. The 1.66 trillion yen acquisition made Softbank the second-fastest growing company in sales terms on the Nikkei 225 Stock Average for the fiscal first half ended Sept. 30. Operating profit rose to 73.8 billion yen ($615 million) in the three months ended March 31 from 34.4 billion yen in Q4 2005, while sales more than doubled to 721.9 billion yen from 298.4 billion yen, according to Bloomberg.

SoftBank Mobile White Plan Results

SoftBank Mobile has announced that the number of subscriptions for the companies “While Plan” has exceeded four million on May 3, 2007. Originally introduced in early January, this simple price package offers a monthly basic charge of ¥980 with free domestic voice calls between SoftBank Mobile users from 1:00 to 21:00, and for domestic voice calls other than those it charges a tariff of 21 yen/30 sec. In addition, text messaging between 3G users is, with some restrictions, free of charge.

Satellite Phones for the Masses

According to this article on the Yomiuri, plans to launch a satellite to create an emergency cell phone relay station in space were announced by the Japanese Internal Affairs and Communications Ministry last week. The stationary orbital satellite with an antenna more than twice the size of any existing satellite antenna, would be used to secure mobile phone connections when ground base relay stations have been knocked out in an earthquake or other natural disasters. The ministry hopes to have the system running by the end of fiscal 2015.