Japan’s mobile phone market: 2006 results

Japan finished 2006 with a 71.8% wireless penetration rate, which translates to 91.8 million people. Obviously, with the increase of the penetration rate, the net additions are slowing down with each year – 5.5m in 2005 versus 4.8m in 2006.

In 2006, the wireless market in Japan was dominated by DoCoMo with 51.1m users, trailed by KDDI with 25.4m of combined au and Tu-ka user bases, leaving Vodafone KK (now Softbank Mobile) on the third place with 15.2m customers.
The area, in which KDDI outperformed DoCoMo is ARPU, reaching JPY7,040 compared with DoCoMo’s JPY6,910. Vodafone traditionally finished in third place with JPY5,890.
Handset shipments have actually increased in 2006 hitting 48.7 million units compared with 44.8 million in the previous year, but less than 51 million handsets shipped in 2004.

Japan wireless subscribers: September 2006 data

TCA's mobile phone market data for September revealed that Japan's wireless user base has increased by 315,000 users since August, totaling in 93,812,400 wireless subscribers. On the wireless carrier front there were winners and losers, with KDDI au getting 312,500 subscribers while KDDI's another brand - 2G carrier TU-KA - lost 151,700. But TU-KA can be hardly called a loser as KDDI's goal is to transform TU-KA's 2G user base to au's 3G services. Meanwhile DoCoMo managed to sign up 126,300 new users and Softbank continued Vodafone's tradition of adding the fewest of customers among three carriers (I exlude TU-KA from this competition) - it recorded only 23,400 net additions in September.

Source: TCA

Japan wireless subscribers: February data

The number of Japan’s wireless subscribers increased by 334,700 in February, driving the total user-base to 90,767,700 active users. KDDI au posted the largest net additions, signing up 275 thousand users. However, these high results were undermined by losses at KDDI’s struggling 2G unit – Tu-ka, which reported almost 115 thousand subscribers leaving the company. NTT DoCoMo signed up 162 thousand new users, while Vodafone lagged behind with twelve thousand of net adds.

Measuring by total number of subscribers, NTT DoCoMo continued its domination with 56% market share, which translates into 50.6 million wireless subscribers. KDDI was in a distant second place with au unit taking 24% (22m) of the market share and Tu-ka unit being down to 3% (2.9m). Vodafone slightly improved its performance, having 17% of the market share with the total customer base, reaching 15.1 million.

Tu-ka S: that's what they call a cell phone!

Released in November 2004, Tu-Ka S cell phone impresses you with its extreme simplicity. By the way, S in its name stands for simplified, while Tu-Ka is a name of wireless carrier, a unit of KDDI group that targets non-3G users and runs on 2G PDC network.

This phone does not have any screen, address book or any other features we got used to have on modern cell phone. The only feature it has is voice communication. That's it.

Of course, there is a reason why Kyocera came up with such device. It aims senior citizens that prefer devices with simple interface and easy-to-see buttons. Believe it or not, the phone proved to be popular enough to help Tu-Ka to stop the tendency of customers fleeing from the carrier. Actually, Tu-Ka even managed to do some new net additions in recent months.

Tu-Ka S specifications:

• Weight - 87g
• Talk time - 240 minutes
• Stand-by time - 840 hours