[originaltext] NIT DoCoMo Inc, Japan’s largest mobile phone service provider

NIT DoCoMo Inc, Japan’s largest mobile phone service provider, has 50.5 million customers and KDDI Corp has 24.1 million. Vodafone KK has just 17 percent of the Japanese market and is straggling to match services such as wireless credit card payments and song downloads offered at the larger companies.
    DoCoMo and KDDI "are trying to add new services such as auction sites, credit card and movie downloads," says Gerhard Fasol, president of Eurotechnology Japan KK, a telecommunications  consulting and research company in Tokyo. "Vodafone KK doesn’t have a real edge at the moment."
    Vodafone, the world’s largest mobile phone operator, and Tokyo-based Softbank said on March 3 that they are in talks on a transaction, but didn’t provide details. Softbank may pay as much as 2 trillion yen (17.2 billion US dollars) for 98 percent of Vodafone KK, one of the biggest acquisitions by a Japanese company, the Nihon Keizai newspaper reported March 5, without citing anyone.
    "We’re committing all our efforts into the talks," says Softbank spokesman Hideo Azuma on March 4. "We can’t comment on time frame, price or any other details." Softbank’s stock has more than doubled in the past year. "Investors are less concerned about Softbank’s risk of large-scale financing but are reacting positively to the forward-looking move," says Hiroichi Nishi, an equities manager at Nikko Cordial Securities Inc in Tokyo.