SoftBank turns to Wi-Fi to support mobile

Softbank CEO Masayoshi Son turned heads this morning at the Mobile Asia Congress by declaring that mobile networks alone are not capable of supporting future data-intensive devices and offloading to Wi-Fi will become a core strategy of the Japanese operator. “Over 50 percent of data traffic happens from home [in Japan], so we have to have Wi-Fi handsets,” he said. To that end, Son cited the operator’s recent release of eight new ‘mobile Wi-Fi’ handsets. “3G and 4G is the way to have blanket coverage, but to have an even richer experience we need Wi-Fi.”

The CEO of Japan’s largest Internet group believes that current and future mobile networks may not be able to support the evolution of devices. In theory, he said, if the rate of device development continues, in 2024 an iPhone would be 1000 times more powerful and able to store up to 32 terrabytes of data, enough to house 8 million songs and 72,000 years of newspaper publications. “The PC Internet day is gone, the majority of Internet access will come from mobile,” he said. “We will go aggressively to LTE but LTE is still not fast enough. We need both WiFi and mobile.” Separately, Son revealed that the company is mulling possible investments in software or mobile content companies in India and Southeast Asia. “We just partner, we invest 20 percent, 30 percent,” Son told reporters on the sidelines of the Congress. “We’d like to bring social games and others into Japan” from China.