Japan's number two mobile telephone operator KDDI Corp said Monday it had weathered increasingly fierce competition to post a rise in interim profits on the back of brisk subscriber growth. KDDI said it had signed up more than a million new customers for its mainstay "au" cellphone brand in the six months to September, ratcheting up the pressure on rivals NTT DoCoMo and Softbank.
Net profit rose 7.1 percent to 145.7 billion yen (1.26 billion dollars), KDDI said in a statement. Operating profit gained 8.8 percent to 249.61 billion yen as revenue increased by 8.1 percent to 1.73 trillion yen. Japan's cellphone providers have been waging a fierce battle for market share since rule changes a year ago allowing people to switch mobile telephone operators without changing their phone numbers.
The mobile business continued to drive KDDI's growth, with operating profit up 12.6 percent, while the fixed-line division remained a drag on profits with an increased operating loss of 29.5 billion yen. At the end of September, KDDI had 28.74 million subscribers for its "au" service, up from 27.32 million at the end of March. KDDI is expecting its "au" subscriber base to reach 30 million by the end of March and to take a 30 percent share of the market.