Services and Market Analysis
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.
Read more about this topic: SoftBank Mobile
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