After much speculation it was announced today that the new brand name for Vodafone KK will be … Softbank Mobile. Logos, retail outlets and marketing material will all be rebranded, with Softbank citing the target date of October this year for completion of the process.

In other Vodafone news, the network has begun to release details of its summer lineup. Interestingly Vodafone is continuing to push prepay in a market which just does not seem to want it – announcing the V201SH, a pretty dull-looking prepay-only handset. Vodafone doesn’t release prepaid subscriber figures for Japan but as of April 2006, DoCoMo had 51,000 prepaid customers and au 288,000, tiny percentages of their overall subscriber bases.

# posted by Jan Kuczynski @ 10:26 am