NTT’s share in IP phone market tops 30%

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The two regional fixed-line services units of Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corp saw their combined share top 30% for the first time ever in Japan’s Internet Protocol phone market in terms of the number of subscribers, government data showed Tuesday.

As of the end of March, the NTT units — NTT East Corp and NTT West Corp — had a combined share of 32.2% of Japan’s IP telephony market, biggest in the market, the Internal Affairs and Communications Ministry said. The group increased its share by 10.3 percentage points from a year before.

The NTT units outpaced Softbank BB Corp, a Softbank Corp subsidiary, which came in second with a 25.8% share, down 7.4 points.

The NTT group offers IP telephone services in tandem with its fiber-optic broadband services, which contributed to increasing the NTT presence in the IP phone market. The group’s share in the fiber-optic market stood at 72.2%, up 3.2 points.

The ministry also said that NTT DoCoMo Inc saw its share of the cellular phone and personal handy phone system market slip below 50% for the first time ever in terms of subscriber numbers.

At the end of March, DoCoMo’s share stood at 49.7%, down 2.5 points. The share came to 28.3% for KDDI Corp, the au mobile phone operator, and 17.3% for Softbank Mobile Corp, another Softbank unit.