Twice in one month? SoftBank Mobile has again lowered the minimum price of its all-you-can-eat "Packet Flat-rate Full" data plan for the iPhone 3G. The minimum fee for low packet usage, lowered earlier this month from a flat JPY5985 to JPY1695, now drops to JPY1029 per month. If you're a light data sipper, you might pay as little as JPY2324 per month for your combined White Plan, S! Basic Pack, and Packet Flat-rate Full data plan (though once you start playing with web sites and the App Store and other iPhone goodies, you're not likely to stick to that data diet).
The move is SoftBank's response to competitor DoCoMo recently dropping its minimum packet plan fee to JPY1029. Keep duking it out on price, boys; I've got lots of stuff to download!
Mobile industry consultants Eurotechnology Japan KK estimate that between 75,000 and 125,000 iPhone 3Gs were sold in Japan between the device's release on July 11 and the end of the month. The company describes its methodology in an August 8 message:
SoftBank Mobile subscribers increased by 158,900 during June 2008, but 215,400 during July 2008.
Eurotechnology sees no similar large jumps in past data, other than seasonal jumps in March of the years observed (attributable to strong sales before the traditional start of the financial year, school year, and general employment year in April).
As no other high-profile phones were introduced by SoftBank in July, the month's unusually high subscription increase of 56,500 users can be safely attributed to new iPhone 3G subscribers (including existing SoftBank subscribers adding iPhone as a second phone, or defectors from other carriers).
The above would not count existing SoftBank subscribers upgrading from an existing phone to iPhone. With no numbers released by SoftBank, Eurotechnology guesses at a number similar to the 56,500 new subscribers – or for simplicity, 100,000 total.
Assuming a +/-50% margin of error on the number of upgrading subscribers yields a ballpark result of 75,000 - 100,000 iPhone 3Gs sold in Japan during July 2008.
If sales keep up that pace, Eurotechnology estimates between 640,000 - 1 million iPhone 3Gs sold in Japan during 2008. Nice numbers - though still only 1.2 - 2% of all handsets sold in the country for the year.
The Japan iPhone 3G sales numbers are a big piece of guesswork, but it's a rough block to start whittling into useful shape as more data appears. Stay tuned for more –
iPhone 3G users in Japan: SoftBank Mobile just unilaterally made your monthly data fee cheaper. Maybe.
The company is revising its monthly JPY5985 all-you-can-eat "Packet Flat-rate Full" data plan, required for all iPhone 3G contracts, to a cost of JPY0.084 per packet. The new minimum fee drops to only JPY1695 for up to 20,175 packets; the fee rises with usage from there, up to a maximum of the old cost of JPY5985 for 71,250 packets or more.
In other words: it's still all-you-can-eat, but light users can now shave some coin from their bill. At the same time, SoftBank Mobile is strengthening its E-mail (i) service for iPhone 3G to store users' mail indefinitely with no scheduled deletion, though a mail data limit of 200MB or 5000 messages will still apply. http://www.softbankmobile.co.jp/en/news/press/2008/20080805_02/index.htm... (English)
Robo Japan 2008 promises to be one of the more interesting gadget trade shows you can visit this year. Industrial robots will be in abundance, but the show organizers are placing emphasis on robot assistants for health care and the home. Meet the latest 'bots at Pacifico Yokohama on October 11-13. (Don't miss the 14th ROBO-ONE event on the first two days, featuring gladiatorial matches between two-legged walking robots.) http://www.robo-japan.jp/index_e.html (English) http://www.robo-one.com/ (Japanese)
Apple claims 1 million iPhone 3Gs sold worldwide in the first three days (a sales feat that took the first iPhone 74 days), along with over 10 million applications from the App Store. Not surprisingly, the gadget press in Japan this past week has been focused on the iPhone 3G, and applications from Japanese developers. Here are a few of the Japanese apps appearing in the news:
Rakuten Shoken's stock trading software "iSPEED" released its iPhone version on July 11. Use a couple of fingertips to zoom in and out of stock charts, just as you do with photos. http://www.rakuten-sec.co.jp/ITS/ispeed/
For those going places, Navitime Japan's free "NAVITIME" application comes to the iPhone, dispensing street directions, train travel times, locations of WiFi hotspots and gasoline stands, and more. The company will later follow with more feature-packed paid versions. http://corporate.navitime.co.jp/topics/20080711.html
Or choose "Ekitan Express iPhone/iPod touch", a native version of the popular Ekitan transportation info application. Check train and flight schedules, train transfers, up-to-date info on delays, and so on from wherever you are. It's free for now, though a paid service is under consideration. (Should Ekitan go all paid on you, try an iPhone-friendly web service like http://touch.jorudan.co.jp/ ) http://ekitan.co.jp/news/press/2008/07/0711100739.html
Game developer Hudson Soft Co. wants to help iPhone owners kill time with "Bomberman Touch", "Aqua Forest" (JPY900 each), and "Sudoku" (JPY700) games. The company offers additional games for the device's Safari web browser. http://corporate.navitime.co.jp/topics/20080711.html
SUNSOFT is offering "Puzzle Game Shanghai", a version of the classic tile-stacking game, for JPY1200. In the US, it's sold as "Mahjong Solitaire" for $9.99. http://www.sun-denshi.co.jp/soft/iphone/
Were you looking for something a little more "exotic" from Japan's developers? How about this one: Asial Corporation Japan's free "Abacus" application. It turns your sideways iPhone/iPod touch into a clickety-clackety abacus you work with a fingertip. (The interface looks a little pokey to respond in the video, so you'll get beaten down in speed competitions by old shopkeepers with their real abacuses. But the way you reset the virtual abacus by shaking the iPhone is kind of neat.) http://www.asial.co.jp/pressrelease/238 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fq4mvenfn84
Other offerings with a Japan feel include a Golgo 13 comics reader, a postal code lookup utility, the "Gengou Free" conversion utility for Japanese/Western calendar years, and "The Wisdom" E/J dictionary. They're all easy to find inside the Japanese App Store, so have at it, iPhone fans.
So, did the iPhone 3G make its July 11 Japan debut with a bang? Yes, as you've already heard if you've listened to news at all. Several SoftBank Mobile sales outlets in Tokyo each faced queues of over a thousand shoppers; the Ometasando location had 1500 in line before SoftBank capped it with a "sold out" sign, after which the line just kept going with people lining up for the chance of a phone the next day. Throughout Japan, iPhones flew out the doors fast, to the tune of 25,000 units total the first two days.
Not surprisingly, the iPhone 3G was the top-selling phone that day, according to the BCN Ranking service: the 16GB model accounted for 36.8% of all mobile phone unit sales and the 8GB model for another 8.1%, totalling 44.9% - amazing performance in a market where any two-digit percentage is a rarity. The next day, though, numbers were more restrained (as was supply): a 10.3% share for the 16GB iPhone 3G and 5.6% for Casio's water-resistant W61CA from au, with the 8GB iPhone 3G coming in third after that.
Unit sales by carrier on July 11 broke down to 51.6% for Softbank Mobile, 26.4% for DOCOMO, and 19.6% for au/KDDI. On the 12th, though, SoftBank racked up only 27.7% of sales – again, says BCN, partly due to simply not having enough iPhones on hand to sustain the surge. For either day, the numbers represent a big reversal of the status quo: for the month of June, for example, unit sales share by carrier were 52.5% for DOCOMO, 32.8% for au, and only 13.8% for SoftBank.
As of today, many SoftBank shops around Japan continue telling eager would-be customers that they have no iPhones and don't know when the next shipment arrives. Can SoftBank stay on top of its momentarily massive market share? That will largely depend on the iPhone supply.
SoftBank Mobile announced that it's shutting down all 2G mobile services, which have been in operation since April 1994, on March 31, 2010. The company will focus all resources on its 3G services that began in December, 2002. Existing 2G users will receive notices on what they need to do to upgrade. http://www.softbankmobile.co.jp/ja/news/press/2008/20080703_01/index.htm... (Japanese)
Delicious
Digg
Reddit
Magnoliacom
Newsvine
Furl
Google
Yahoo
Technorati
Pubsub
