The Japanese mobile phone industry is one of the most advanced in the world. As of March, 2022 there were 199.99 million mobile contracts in Japan[1] according to the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications. This is 158 percent of Japan's total population.[2]
The mobile phone industry is currently transitioning to 5G and utilizing new technologies like Fully Virtualized Cloud Native Mobile Network[3] (FVCNMN) currently led by Rakuten mobile.[4] FVCNMN was previously considered impossible to deploy in a big scale.
In Japanese, mobile phone handsets (携帯電話端末, keitaidenwa-tanmatsu) are often referred to as simply keitai denwa (携帯電話) or keitai (携帯) for short.
There are four main mobile network operators (MNO) and a series of mobile virtual network operators (MVNO) which work by renting out a portion of the network of a MNO and providing a services on top of them.
| Operator | Contracts Q3 2021 | Q2 2021 | Q3 2020 |
|---|---|---|---|
| NTT Docomo | 36.6% | -0.1 | -0.3 |
| KDDI Group | 27.1% | -0.1 | -0.3 |
| SoftBank | 20.9% | -0.2 | -0.5 |
| Rakuten Mobile | 2.2% | +0.2 | +1.4 |
| Other MVNO | 13.2% | +0.0 | -0.2 |
- ^ "Announcement of Quarterly Data on the Number of Telecommunications Service Contracts and Market Share (FY2021 Q3 (End of December)) | Press Release". MIC ICT Policy. Archived from the original on 2022-08-29. Retrieved 2022-08-29.
- ^ "Statistics Bureau Home Page/Statistical Handbook of Japan 2021". www.stat.go.jp. Archived from the original on 2021-10-23. Retrieved 2022-08-29.
- ^ Cite error: The named reference
:1was invoked but never defined (see the help page). - ^ 楽天モバイル. "楽天モバイル". network.mobile.rakuten.co.jp (in Japanese). Archived from the original on 2022-08-26. Retrieved 2022-08-29.