Japan's third-largest mobile operator SoftBank Corp. said Wednesday it had inked a deal with Apple Inc. to start selling the iPhone later this year.
SoftBank spokesman Naoki Nakayama offered no further details of pricing and dates, saying it's not clear if the deal is exclusive. The company hopes that the launch of the iPhone in Japan will further boost its efforts to woo more subscribers.
Tokyo-based SoftBank has 18.77 million subscribers in Japan and has been aggressively expanding by offering cheaper services, but still lags behind after NTT DoCoMo and KDDI Corp.
Foreign-designed handsets have traditionally been unpopular among Japan's notoriously finicky consumers. But Apple enjoys a high brand profile thanks to the popularity of its iPod digital music player.
Japan boasts some of the world's most sophisticated cell phones, which can be used for watching digital TV broadcasts, taking digital photos, doing restaurant searches, e-mail, electronic payments, reading digital novels and music downloads.
Source: Xinhua\agencies
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