KDDI Retakes Second Place in Japan

KDDI has reclaimed second place in Japan's cellular phone market after loosing it briefly to J-Phone last month. The company attributed much of the months subscription surge to the launch of its own 3G network. Figures from the Japanese Telecommunications Carriers Association showed that KDDI had a total of 12,410,400 subscribers, compared to J-Phone's 12,405,400, a difference of just 5,000 subscribers.

During April, KDDI added 196,100 subscribers, J-Phone added 173,400 and DoCoMo kept its top slot with 273,000 new subscribers. DoCoMo finished the month with just over 41 million subscribers. KDDI's other unit Tu-ka added 4,400 subscribers, bucking a trend over the past few months where its subscriber base had declined as customers migrated to KDDI's au network.

Significant were the figures for the 3G networks, as DoCoMo added 16,100 subscribers to give it a total of 105,500 - but KDDI surged ahead with 334,100 subscribers to its newly launched CDMA2000 1x service.'"

Posted to the site on 10th May 2002