Japan's mobile price war starts to heat up

摘要

NTT DoCoMo went on the offensive in late June, launching new discount price plans to stave off competition, only to have rival SoftBank Mobile match its offers within hours. DoCoMo's market hold has been under pressure thanks to mobile number portability, which began in late October, and SoftBank Mobile's aggressive US$8 White Plan, which was launched Jan. 15. In the past seven months, DoCoMo's share of net adds has surpassed 30% only once (see fig. 1). In contrast, SoftBank has added more net subscribers than DoCoMo every month except for March, with the number of White Plan subscribers surpassing 5 million in early June.