Japanese Mobiles top 100 million

the Telecommunications Carriers Association today announced the newest mobile contract figures for the month of December 2007. the number of mobile phones on contract in Japan rose above 100 million (82.4% of the Japanese population) for the first time, the exact figure being 100,524,700.

other notable facts were that DoCoMo saw its first rise in the 6 figure range since March of 2007, and that SoftBank held on to the top spot to make it 8 consecutive months since May 2007. also despite the constant lose from TU-KA, au managed to hold on to number 2.

Carrier	Dec 2007 Net Gains	Total as of Dec 2007 (% market share)
NTT DoCoMo	121,500	53,150,500 (53.0%)
KDDI (au)	138,600	29,554,800 (29.4%)
SoftBank Mobile	210,800	17,613,500 (17.4%)
E-mobile	83,600	205,900 (0.1%)
Total	554,500	100,524,700 (100%?)

the official numbers can be seen in english here. it is worth keeping in mind that you have almost another 5 million PHS phones out there too!

ps. the picture is of the 'White Family', subject of the excellent award winning SoftBank Mobile advertising campaign. if you don't mind Japanese, the CM gallery can be found here.