Tokyo : Softbank, Japan's third-largest mobile wireless carrier, will introduce in April its first smartphone based on the Android operating system of Google, Chief Executive Officer Masayoshi Son said yesterday.
The company expects to double its network of base stations in the 12 months starting April 1 to handle additional traffic the new phone is expected to generate, Son told reporters in Tokyo yesterday.
The company, Apple's exclusive provider of the iPhone in Japan, is adding the Android model to expand it lineup of smartphones, devices that can surf the Web and download music, video and applications to counter similar moves by rivals.
NTT DoCoMo, Japan's largest mobile-phone operator, plans to sell its second Android handset next month and KDDI, the country's second-largest, will introduce its first model in June.
Android, a newcomer to the smartphone operating-system market, will see its handset base jump to 68 million units by 2013, from 690,000 in 2008, researcher IDC said in January.
Google software will outpace Apple's and Microsoft's platforms to be second only to Symbian, used by Nokia.
