New Mobile Entrant In Japan: Softbank
Softbank did an amazing job bringing broadband to the people in Japan with their YahooBB offering. It was incredibly cheap, incredibly fast, and you couldn't walk down the street without someone trying to get you to sign up. Now, Softbank CEO Masayoshi Son wants to do the same thing with mobile phones. Of course, the big difference this time is that everyone already has a mobile phone in Japan. Softbank may be able to make them cheaper, and can try to offer more applications and content, but the Japanese mobile phone industry has always been fairly advanced - so it's not as if he's trying to route around old time carriers who aren't offering anything to their users. If anything, though, a price war could stand to shake up the Japanese market, and Son seems to have no problem being the low cost provider.
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