SoftBank iPhone: How much will it cost the Japanese?
Executive summary: 5.7% more expensive than DoCoMo’s latest models over one year.
With the recent confirmation of the rumours regarding the release of the iPhone in Japan via SoftBank, and with Steve Jobs promising that no-one will pay more than $199 dollars for the 8GB device, let us look at what this will actually cost, once one adds a service contract into the deal. For the sake of simplicity, I’ll assume one US dollar equals one hundred yen, so the price Steve Jobs is promising is 19,900 yen. As a point of comparison, the cheapest price I see offered for the 8GB iPod touch is 32,448 yen, so for the handset alone it is over a third cheaper. However, this figure ignores the contract that must be purchased to go along with the handset. By working from the information provided on the SoftBank web site, one can determine the expected total cost of ownership.
- Basic package free minutes:
8,190 yen (L Plan Value, 300 free minutes, 10.5 yen per 30 seconds afterwards) - Voice mail service:
315 yen (extra for visual voice mail?) - Email, web access fee:
315 yen - Unlimited data packets:
9,800 yen (X Series smartphone price) - Total monthly charge:
18,602 yen - Total one-year cost:
223,440 yen
Note that if you use less than 6 MB per month the data packet cost will be lower. So, adding in the 19,900 yen for the handset, that’s 243,340 yen for a year, or about $2,433 or £1,160 in the UK. Note that actual costs might be cheaper if you add family discount plans, loyalty discounts for existing customers, and so on. Actual costs may also be more expensive if you go over your minutes, and also adding in an extra 980 yen per month for free calls to all other SoftBank phones from 1 am to 9 pm, and free calls all the time to family members.
Another plan, the Gold Plan, has a basic package charge of 9,600 yen per month with 200 minutes, but free to other SoftBank phones from 1 am to 9 pm, and 21 yen per 30 seconds outside these hours or to other carriers, but with discounts from 37% to 70% for long-term customers, and loyalty bonuses can be carried over from other carriers. Then there’s the Super Bonus, which has even more complicated trade-offs, but we’ll not go into that here…
By comparison, looking at the just-released range of phones from DoCoMo, the 906i series, a handset costs around 50,000 yen, then monthly costs for a similar service to the above is 8,400 yen for L Value plan with 240 minutes then 10.5 yen per thirty seconds, 5,985 yen for unlimited data packets on full browser, 315 yen for voice mail, and 315 yen for iMode access, giving a total monthly cost of 15,015 yen, and a yearly cost of 230,180 yen including handset, or $2,302, or £1,101 in the UK. This makes the iPhone 5.7% more expensive than DoCoMo’s offerings, although with a myriad of discount schemes available the real price difference is much, much harder to directly quantify.
Of course, without emoji icon support, both display and writing, it will not make much headway amongst the influential youth set (yes, that will be a deal-breaker), and with Flash definitely not supported, despite being a standard feature on most new phones, the SoftBank iPhone will be hard to sell. However, as I predicted over a year ago, and I am yet to see any data to make me want to change my mind, the lack of One Seg television and FeliCa-based electronic cash will not affect the desirability of the SoftBank iPhone.
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Darin said,
June 11, 2008 @ 00:10
Softbank’s whole marketing scheme is they’re so much cheaper then the rest, but when you actually try and add the same features you get with the basic au/docomo plans to your Softbank plan, it’s more expensive. Softbank is only cheap if you only use your phone as a watch for time.
I’m pissed the iPhone went to Softbank, but I may still end up getting it just because it’s that damn cool. However I hope that Apple has worked out some special data plan contract with Softbank like they have with the other carriers around the world, because it would be sick to spend as much for your service contract every month as you do for the actual unit every month provided you don’t actually talk on the phone at all.
Ken Y-N said,
June 11, 2008 @ 07:50
Darin, once I started adding up the figures I was pretty surprised at where I ended up. All the companies’ pake-hodai schemes (apart from eMobile) are horrendously expensive, especially once you add in “full browser” support, and none of them offer free modem usage. In addition, given the lack of public WiFi, you really need the pake-hodai.
I was also surprised by SoftBank’s Smartphone surcharge, and I wouldn’t be surprised if they add something more on top for the iPhone.
Oh, if you want little or no talk time at all, the basic package becomes just a couple of thousand yen, but yes, it’s interesting to see that a medium usage plan ends up costs almost as much as the phone itself!
Finally, loyalty discounts will make it cheaper, of course.
Drew said,
June 11, 2008 @ 11:51
I think in a lot of cases, it makes a lot more sense to get the White Plan, which is 980 yen, includes free calls to other Softbank handsets from 1am-9pm, and costs 21 yen / 30 seconds otherwise. You can get the Double White Plan to drop that to 10.5 yen / 30 seconds. There’s no need to get the Basic Free Minutes thing unless you talk a lot on the phone (and let’s face it, the reason to get a smart phone is usually that you spend more time texting/internetting than you do phoning).
I just spent the past week studying Softbank plans as I upgraded my own phone (dropped from X-series to save 4000 yen/month on data plan) and helped some others get Softbank as well.
Drew said,
June 11, 2008 @ 11:56
Incidentally, on a related note. I think that the iPhone will sell well but I suspect that there will be a lot of complaints (or that people will retain their old phones to use occasionally). One of the reasons that I just switched back to a normal (but admittedly very full-featured) Japanese keitai after having a smartphone (Softbank X01HT) for almost 2 years, was that I missed doing “normal” Japanese keitai stuff — iAppli, Train Schedule stuff, QR codes, the phone-based BBSes and RPGs etc… The Japanese content developers had no idea what to do about smart phones, so they just ignored them.
zichi said,
June 11, 2008 @ 17:13
The most popular Softbank plan is the ‘White Plan’ at ¥980 per month, with 12 million users. The lion’s share of Softbank’s total subscribers of about 16 million. Calls to other Softbank users between 1am to 9pm are free, at other times, the charge is ¥21 per 30 seconds.
Unlimited use of mail to other Softbank handsets. Mail to other carriers is ¥3.15 to ¥210.
* Basic ‘White Plan’: ¥980 per month. (Free to other Softbank handsets between 1am to 9pm. At other times, ¥21 per 30 seconds. Calls to other carriers, ¥21 per 30 seconds).
* Voice mail service: ¥315 (extra for visual voice mail?).
* Email, web access fee: ¥315.
* Unlimited Packet Discount: ¥5,180. (Monthly charge ¥980, in addition fees will be from ¥1029 to ¥4,410 per month. Up to 12,500 packets at 128 bytes per packet will be ¥1,029 and up to unlimited use after 52,500 packets will be ¥4,200. So unlimited use for mail and web will be ¥980 plus ¥4,200 makes it ¥5,180).
* Total monthly basic charges: ¥6,475.
* Cost of iPhone3G: ¥19,900.
* Cost of two year contract with unlimited web and mail use: 24 months times ¥6,475 equals ¥155,400.
* Cost of two years MobileMe: 2 times ¥9800 equals ¥19,600.
* Total cost of basic charges, cost of iPhone, MobileMe, for two years will be ¥194,900 which works out at ¥8,120 per month. In addition there will be the fees for phone calls and others.
Darin said,
June 11, 2008 @ 17:43
Yea, if you forgo phone calls, then you can get a reasonably cheap Softbank contract. However if you can make calls, it’s hardly a phone anymore.
Right now I basically have what zichi has just described for my au phone, and that’s about how much I pay a month too, however I can also make more calls then I usually do.
I’m hoping that Softbank will have a special iPhone only/tailored for the iPhone service contract like AT&T does, or everyone I know gets and iPhone and switches to Softbank so I just wont call them during peak hours.
Ken Y-N said,
June 11, 2008 @ 22:18
zichi, as mentioned by Darin, that’s fine if you never want to call anyone in the 80% who have DoCoMo or au phones, let alone landlines.
Also, you are underpricing the unlimited packet discount. SoftBank have a PC Site Direct for X Series phones, their Smartphone range, that costs 9,800 yen per month, not the 4,200 yen you are using. It’s less if you somehow manage to use under 6 megabytes, but one YouTube video or less than one minute of 3G data transfer would blow your allowance.
And as a final also, AT&T are adding an extra $10 monthly charge to make up for the lower handset price; will we see SoftBank adding an extra iPhone charge too?
zichi said,
June 12, 2008 @ 00:05
Darin & Ken Y-N, thank you. I shall amend my thinking and my figures and like you say Softbank, may also add an additional charge for the iPhone3G.
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June 28, 2008 @ 22:54
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Jack Sht said,
July 5, 2008 @ 20:22
the iPhone will most likely not be competing on price. Did that occur to any of you wanna bees?