iPhone to shake up Japan’s cellphone industry?

Wednesday, August 13, 2008 at 09:28 PM | Posted by kazouz

A Softbank Mobile official believes that the arrival of Apple’s iPhone 3G will force Japanese cellphone makers to revamp their handsets to allow increasingly sophisticated software.

“Faced with increased competition, Japanese handset providers will have to provide more software-oriented machines like the touch-screen iPhone, said Tetsuzo Matsumoto, a senior executive vice president at Softbank Mobile,” AFP reports.

“It’s now the turning point,” said Matsumoto, whose company is the only Japanese carrier so far to have launched the iPhone 3G in Japan.

Other operators, such as NTT DoCoMo, are skeptical.