Softbank leads Japan net adds for ninth straight month

The Japanese cellular operator Softbank has once again reported the highest monthly net subscriber additions, with 320,000 net adds in September taking its customer total 30.36 million at the end of the month. Larger rival KDDI added 224,900 net new customers in September to boost its user base to 36.11 million, while market leader NTT DoCoMo saw its own total climb by 158,600 to 60.79 million. Both Softbank and KDDI have been boosted by the launch of the new Apple iPhone 5 handset; NTT does not offer iPhones as part of its own portfolio. The fourth-placed operator eMobile, which recently emerged as a takeover target for Softbank, has not released its own end-September subscriber statistics; it had 4.14 million customers at the end of June 2012, according to TeleGeography’s GlobalComms Database, up from 4.02 million three months earlier.