History
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.
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.
Read more about this topic: SoftBank Mobile
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