Mobile phone industry in Japan

<p>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  according to the <a href="/facts/Ministry_of_Internal_Affairs_and_Communications/mvE8QeQm">Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications</a>. This is 158 percent of Japan's total population.
</p><p>The mobile phone industry is currently transitioning to 5G and utilizing new technologies like Fully Virtualized Cloud Native Mobile Network (FVCNMN) currently led by Rakuten mobile. FVCNMN was previously considered impossible to deploy in a big scale.
</p><p>In <a href="/facts/Japanese_language/EEv485a5">Japanese</a>, mobile phone handsets (携帯電話端末, <i>keitaidenwa-tanmatsu</i>) are often referred to as simply <i>keitai denwa</i> (携帯電話) or <i>keitai</i> (携帯) for short.
</p><p>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.
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<table><tbody><tr><th>Operator</th><th>Contracts Q3 2021</th><th>Q2 2021</th><th>Q3 2020</th></tr><tr><td>NTT Docomo</td><td>36.6%</td><td>-0.1</td><td>-0.3</td></tr><tr><td>KDDI Group</td><td>27.1%</td><td>-0.1</td><td>-0.3</td></tr><tr><td>SoftBank</td><td>20.9%</td><td>-0.2</td><td>-0.5</td></tr><tr><td>Rakuten Mobile</td><td>2.2%</td><td>+0.2</td><td>+1.4</td></tr><tr><td>Other MVNO</td><td>13.2%</td><td>+0.0</td><td>-0.2</td></tr></tbody></table>

Mobile phone industry in Japan open-in-new

Mobile phone industry in Japan