TOKYO—J-Phone, a Vodafone Group mobile carrier in Japan, became the country’s second-largest mobile service, exceeding au, a mobile service provided by KDDI, according to statistics released by Telecommunications Carriers Association (TCA),an industry association in Japan.
TCA releases the number of mobile service subscribers by carrier in Japan every month. According to TCA’s statistics as of the end of March, J-Phone won 313,800 new subscribers in March, which pushed up the total J-Phone subscribers as of the end of March to 12.232 million.
On the other hand, au gained merely 174,600 users in March, which made the total au subscribers as of the end of March 12.214 million. J-Phone has been successfully increasing its subscribers riding on a boom of “Sha Mail,” a camera built into a cellular phone that lets users send and receive e-mail with photos. J-Phone is now providing a new service that lets users send and receive e-mail with motion pictures.
According to TCA, the total number of cellular phone users was up by 1.6 percent in March to 69.12 million. Among them, 51.9 million users are subscribing to Internet access services such as NTT DoCoMo’s i-mode.
