KDDI, one of the big four of Japanese mobile business saw its growth impeded in July by iPhone 3G launch. The company added just 17,000 new customers and it was for the first time in company’s history that numbers of cancellations were more than number of new subscriptions. SoftBank the iPhone carrier saw a spike of 52,000 new customers for the same month as iPhone was launched on 11th July. For the year starting in July 2007 and ending in July 2008, SoftBank was the top carrier with 215,400 new subscriptions, followed by NTT DoCoMo 94,200 and Emobile 65,000. In fact, one fourth of SoftBank’s new customers were added in last 20 days of July 2008.
KDDI’s spokesperson acknowledged the iPhone effect by saying, “We are accepting the fact, considering that our handsets weren’t attractive enough.” The cancellations numbers temporarily increased after iPhone was released said the spokesperson.
SoftBank’s PR department said, “We believe our large net growth was an iPhone effect.” The company said that it expects this growth to continue for coming months as the iPhone demand is still very high and the devices are hard to find.
Though, the other two carriers NTT DoCoMo and Emobile have yet not said whether they were affected by iPhone launch, but it is largely believed that they also saw their growth slowed and lost customers in July because of the iPhone launch.
[Via Tech On]