Internet services company Softbank, which bought British carrier Vodafone's mobile business in Japan earlier this year, said on Thursday that its new mobile phones will offer an easy link to Yahoo Internet content.
Softbank Corp President Masayoshi Son said the carrier will expand the lineup of handsets over the next few months to offer 15 new models in 64 colors, at a time when competition among mobile companies is heating up ahead of the arrival of number portability next month.
Number portability, expected Oct. 24 in Japan, will allow users to switch mobile companies without changing their phone numbers. Softbank and its competitors, NTT DoCoMo, the nation's No. 1 mobile company, and KDDI Corp, have been trying to strengthen their services to prevent defection to rivals.
PHOTO: EPA
The easy link to Yahoo, using one button on the planned handsets from Tokyo-based Softbank will allow people to look at mobile versions of Internet content available through the Yahoo portal, Son said.
Up to now, much of the Net content available for Japanese cell phones require payment, but the Yahoo content will be free of charge like the content for personal computers.
Son said his company was gearing up for expected numbers portability.
"We feel like the boxer entering the ring headed to his fight," he told reporters at a Tokyo hotel.
Many Japanese already read the news, exchange e-mail and search for restaurants on Net-connecting mobile phones. Son said the new Yahoo link will turn the industry business model upside down because now people will be able to get to all that information for free.
"There will be hundred times the content that's available now, and almost all of it will be free," he said. "Softbank is going to offer the No. 1 content."
Son did not disclose if he planned any changes to the pricing for using Softbank phones, saying the pricing strategy was still being hammered out "step at a time."
Some are speculating that Softbank may undercut the pricing of rivals with basic talking and data relay charges, because of the company's reputation of offering cheaper broadband services for personal computers to control market share.
Son said Softbank was wiping out the view in Japan that his company during its Vodafone days offered only unfashionable, bulky handsets, and showed that the new offerings included the slimmest models on the market, a few of them as thin as coins.
Softbank, which leads the nation as a broadband services provider and owns a stake in Yahoo Japan, said it was offering more handsets in the broadest range of colors in the next few months ever in the industry in Japan.
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