February update: Japan mobile operator market shares

TCA published its February mobile subscriber numbers for Japan's mobile phone operators. The main points are as follows:

• Japan's mobile population grew by 0.4% from last month reaching 115,686, 400 contracts
• Among all mobile contracts, 96.4% go to cellular phones, with the rest allocated to PHS phones (Willcom)
• Overall cellular operators added 488K subscriptions with DoCoMo being slightly ahead of the pack with 148K adds
• In terms of total subscriber bases, DoCoMo grabs 50% of the market followed by KDDI au (28.3%), Softbank (19.7%) and eMobile (2%)
• Data plan subscriptions account now for 83.1% of total cellular phone market with DoCoMo being above the average with 87.5% of its subscribers using data services
• 3G penetration stands at 96.6% for overall cellular market with Softbank having 97.5% of its subscribers shifted to 3G devices
• Japan cellular market is dominantly postpaid with only 1.2% being still on prepaid; DoCoMo is left with just 0.1% of prepaid accounts