Tetsuzo Matsumoto (Senior Executive Vice-President and Board Member of SOFTBANK MOBILE Corporation), Gerhard Fasol (CEO, Eurotechnology Japan KK) and Dennis Normile (Japan Correspondent of SCIENCE Magazine, and FCCJ) discuss about the future of Japan’s mobile phone market.
“Will the iPhone trigger a turning point in Japan’s mobile phone industry?” (Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Japan, Tokyo Wednesday, August 13, 2008, 12:00-14:00) (Photo: Copyright Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Japan, used with permission)
Left to right: Gerhard Fasol (Eurotechnology Japan), Tetsuzo Matsumoto (VP SoftBank-Mobile) and Dennis Normile discuss the iPhone market entry to Japan
There is a lot of discussions about whether Steve jobs is going to announce an iPhone or iPod-Phone at the Apple Computer Developer’s Conference in SF – according to the headline report on Saturday May 13th, 2006 in Nihon Keizai Shinbun ( the world’s largest business daily ) it’s already known since May this year that Apple and SoftBank are developing such a joint mobile phone with iPod and iTunes functions.
On March 17 SoftBank announced the full acquisition of Vodafone’s Japan subsidiary – the former J-Phone – jointly with YAHOO-Japan as a co-investor – so with about 15 million mobile subscribers in the world’s most advanced mobile market (Japan), SoftBank/Apple will have the firepower to make such a phone a success, provided it’s tuned to Japanese consumers’ needs and dreams – my guess is that it probably will be.
By pure coincidence, the Apple/SoftBank headlines appeared one or two days after DoCoMo and Microsoft announced a music cooperation.
Apple/SoftBank iPod mobile phones coupled to iTunes could have quite a lot of impact on Japan’s music industry: about 20% of Japan’s music sales are to mobile phones. Of all music downloads in Japan about 6% are fixed line internet downloads, and 94% are music downloads to mobile phones: internet music downloads are almost neglibile in comparison to mobile phone music downloads.
Therefore even if iTunes has a huge market share in the fixed line internet world, iTunes cannot have much impact in Japan overall if limited to fixed line internet downloads. iTunes downloads to mobile phones will change the business models of Japan’s music industry – at the moment music downloads to mobile phones cost a lot more than iTunes downloads. An iPod/iTunes music store could reshape the mobile music market in Japan.
In my 20 years of business and work between US/Japan and EU/Japan, I am often surprised how Western executives underestimate economic size and strength of Japan and it’s companies – here is another example: BusinessWeek writes about the SoftBank/iPod phone, and writes that former Apple executives says that Apple’s CEO Steve Jobs wouldn’t normally tie up with a “small fry” like SoftBank…
Is SoftBank really a small fry? Let’s check it out:
Softbank + Softbank-Mobile (former Vodafone KK) combined have substantially higher revenues than Apple Computer for financial years 2005 and 2006 – so clearly Softbank is no ‘small fry’ at all compared to Apple Computer
Revenues of SoftBank + SoftBank Mobile (x-Vodafone KK) were on the order of YEN 2500 Billion (US$ 22 Billion) for the financial year that ended March 31, 2006.
Revenues of Apple Computer were US$ 13.9 Billion for the year ended Sept 24, 2005. – So in terms of revenue the new SoftBank Group (including the recently acquired x-Vodafone KK) is almost twice as large as Apple Computer.
On May 19, 2006, market cap of SoftBank and SoftBank Mobile combined was about 20% less than Apple’s market cap
Market capitalization of Apple Computer was US$ 54.9 Billion on May 19, 2006. Market capitalization of SoftBank (US$ 28 Billion) plus SoftBank Mobile Corp (US$ 15 Billion) was on the order of US$ 43 Billion.
BusinessWeek took note of my letter and published a correction on May 21, 2006, which you can find here and here.
When the iPhone was actually introduced to Japan by SoftBank in 2008, Mr Tetsuzo Matsumoto, CTO and Board Member of SoftBank-Mobile and myself were invited by the Foreign Correspondents Club to hold a Press Conference to comment on the iPhone introduction to Japan – you can find the records here.
