TOKYO—NTT DoCoMo, the leading mobile carrier in Japan, achieved rapid business expansion by gaining a 59.6-percent market share of new customers in September. J-Phone, now owned by the world’s largest mobile carrier Vodafone Group, had expanded its share significantly in July and August, while NTT DoCoMo decreased its share to around 50 percent.
But according to statistics released by the Telecommunications Carrier Association (TCA) on 5 October, J-Phone won 27.1 percent of the 642,100 new subscribers in September. KDDI Group, which offers both the au and Tu-Ka brands, won merely 15.6 percent of new subscribers in September.
As a result, at the end of September, NTT DoCoMo had 38.4 million subscribers, giving it a 58.8-percent market share of total Japanese mobile subscribers. KDDI had 15.8 million users with 24.2-percent market share, and J-Phone had 11.1 million users with 17 percent of the market.
According to TCA, the number of mobile Internet users expanded 3.2 percent in September to 44.9 million. Among them, the i-mode service provided by NTT DoCoMo won 27.7 million users.
