Japan Telecom

"The president used this straw to barter for something of higher value, because his target at that time was the landline communication operator, Japan Telecom. I think that if SoftBank hadn’t entered the ADSL market back then, no matter how much the president wanted to acquire Japan Telecom, the other party might not have paid any attention to SoftBank, and financial institutions might not have sponsored the acquisition."

"Tracing back, both Vodafone Japan and Japan Telecom belonged to the “J-Phone” company. When the president acquired Japan Telecom, he likely already had the idea of acquiring Vodafone Japan. SoftBank not only acquired Japan Telecom but also gained the technology, talents, and customer base that came with it."

"“If your company partners with us, we can offer services like free calls between our IP phone users and Japan Telecom landline users, which will invisibly create a lot of new added value. The merger of the two companies will definitely bring us better cooperative results.” It was because Japan Telecom saw the value of the straw in President Son’s hands that they agreed to the acquisition by SoftBank. At that time, Japan Telecom also had 5 million users, so SoftBank’s acquisition instantly doubled its user base to 10 million."

"Moreover, through acquiring Japan Telecom, SoftBank also absorbed excellent talents and management methods in the communication industry and easily acquired the brand image unique to landline communication operators, which made customers trust and feel secure. The effect was equivalent to exchanging a straw for an orange. No, it felt like exchanging it for high-quality fabric and horses! The president had already foreseen However, he didn’t stop there. Because his ultimate goal was the mobile communication field."

"Masayoshi Son, in the globally reorganizing telecommunications industry, acquired the Japanese subsidiary of Vodafone for about 2 trillion yen. While Vodafone had consolidated sales of 1.47 trillion yen and an operating profit of 158 billion yen (both in the fiscal year 2004), SoftBank, for the fiscal year ending March 2005, had consolidated sales of about 840 billion yen and an operating loss of about 25 billion yen. It had been posting deficits of several hundred billion yen up to that point. The acquisition of Vodafone Japan was precisely an M&A where a small entity swallows a larger one. At that time, to compete with NTT and KDDI as a telecommunications infrastructure provider, SoftBank was heavily investing in Yahoo BB and had just acquired Japan Telecom, a fixed-line phone company."