By the record, NTT has the longest history in the communication service. They started as a government enterprise which included household telephone and internet services. The department that is in charge of the solely mobile service is called DoCoMo(*1) From the monthly market survey by D2 communication, DoCoMo has the most sharing percentage in the mobile service market. They tied their customer by giving 50% discount for 10-year-long subscribers and the contract can be linked among family members.
The second largest market sharer goes to KDDI. KDDI is also a rival to DoCoMo in many alike communication services (e.g. mobile, internet and telephone). KDDI use the mobile brand called "au" (pronounce by letters "ei-you" ) which always be promoted as "au by KDDI" in many commercial. The "au" mobile phone service is roughly cheaper than DoCoMo and they are giving a very low service rate for student *2.
The latest mobile service provider is SoftBank. Formerly SoftBank succeed the mobile service from Vodafone Japan (and before Vodafone Japan have overtaken J-Phone). On their release campaign, SoftBank presented low-cost phone and 0 yen monthly service charge for all internal calls. SoftBank begun tremendous marketing campaign by hiring Holywood superstars "Cameron Diaz" and "Brad Pitt" as their presenters. They are also beginning to sell "Disney" mobile phone which customer can choose their e-mail address with "@disney.ne.jp". Personally, I believe that SoftBank are targeting teenager customer and students. Recently my roommate just changed his mobile phone from au to SoftBank with unconditional student discount and very cutting-edge phone model.
The Japanese mobile phone service market is in a very its full growth. The market plan is just to take other company's subscribers to change their provider and stay at the new one as long as possible. SoftBank and au give big discount for 2-year service contract. Conversingly, DoCoMo which are the most expensive continue to give the 50% discount to former customers and their family.
So ... do you know which provider I am using ? Just make some guess and go to see the answer in the later post. Next, I will give a developer perspective for each company.
*1 in Japanese "doko" means "where" and "mo" is an auxiliary word which often used when the sentence means "all". So that's it everywhere in a preppy tongue.
*2 au holds 2 service channels which are CDMA 1X and CDMA 1X WIN. The phone model for each service are also different. You will get a crappy phone for the CDMA 1X. Ironically, WIN's phones are very stylish. Students have to subscribe for the CDMA 1X to have their student discount which means junk phone and slow connection for academic money saver.
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