SoftBank to Sell IPhone in Japan This Year

Also Wednesday, Spain's largest phone company, Telefonica S.A., announced it will start selling the iphone later this year.

SoftBank spokesman Naoki Nakayama said no further details, such as pricing and dates, were available, and he said it's not clear if the deal is exclusive.

The addition of the iphone to SoftBank's lineup in this intensely competitive mobile market is almost sure to be a plus for the company. Gadget-loving Japan is already a big market for another popular mobile Apple product, the iPod music player.

Tokyo-based SoftBank has 18.77 million subscribers in Japan but lags in third place behind NTT DoCoMo and KDDI Corp. In recent years, it has been aggressively expanding by offering cheaper services and running catchy TV ads featuring actress Cameron Diaz.

The signings with SoftBank and Telefonica S.A. are the latest for Cupertino, Calif.-based Apple, which has inked other deals recently with wireless carriers in Europe and South America in the hope of expanding sales there.

As of the end of March, Apple sold 5.4 million iphones globally, and was struggling to keep up with demand.

Initially Apple insisted on exclusive sales deals for iphone within each given country, but it has begun to break from that pattern. It has exclusive deals with AT&T Inc. in the United States, O2 in Britain, T-Mobile in Germany and France Telecom's Orange wireless arm in France.

The company plans further expansion through a partnership with Mexico City-based America Movil, which boasts 159.2 million subscribers in 16 countries, including Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia and Mexico.

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.

So some of the razzle-dazzle of the iphone — an iPod-cell phone-Internet surfing device_ may be lost on Japanese consumers.

But the gadget, with its trademark touch-screen phone, controlled by the user's fingers, promises an import glamour as well as an extra "cool" factor that's likely to attract many fans here.

NTT DoCoMo spokesman Shinjiro Minami said the company was unhappy that SoftBank had beaten it to an iphone deal as DoCoMo had also been considering such a deal.

"The user interface is very attractive and it's a product that's likely to draw Apple fans in Japan," he said. He added that it was unclear if DoCoMo plans to continue to pursue an iphone deal.

KDDI spokesman Satoru Ito said the carrier has not been interested in offering iphone, and he had no comment on the SoftBank announcement. KDDI users tend to be youngsters who already use cell phones for music players — making the iphone less attractive.

SoftBank, which bought British cellular giant Vodafone Group PLC's struggling Japanese mobile operations in 2006, owns a stake in Yahoo Inc. and offers broadband service in Japan.