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EMobile
From Virtual Japan
eMobile (イー・モバイル株式会社) is a cell phone service provider in Japan that originally only offered data services but has recently moved into the mobile phone market when it teamed up with NTT DoCoMo. Offering a high speed, flat rate cell phone plan.
History
eAccess started working its way into the mobile market in 2005. However, it took a while for much of the licenses to be acquired and testing to be completed. The work was not ready to be released for 2 more years until finally eMobile was ready.
When eMobile was created in March of 2007, it was the first new operator in over a decade. At first its sole offering was data plans, allowing high speed Internet to the portable technology industry. 1 year after its opening, eMobile started providing voice services as well. As one of the newest phone and data providers in Japan, the company is still not that well known but is gaining subscribers at a rapid pace. It added more subscribers in June of 2008, the company registered the 3rd most new users beating au by KDDI (the second largest mobile phone company).
Many of the executives of eMobile have left to pursue other careers. Sachio Semmoto is the current CEO and Chairman. Eric Gan came over from Goldman Sachs (which owns a large percentage of eMobile) and is currently the president and Chief Operating Officer.
Advertising Methods and Controversy
eMobile has a history of using monkeys in its advertisements that are usually designed to represent very famous pop culture icons in Japan. In 2008, eMobile used a monkey to represent presidential hopeful Barack Obama (who is very popular in Japan) to advertise one of their cell phone companies. The monkey was seen holding up signs with the word “Change.”
Americans that saw that ad were outraged, claiming it was blatant racism, and forced eMobile to pull the advertisement. eMobile released a statement apologizing for any confusion, claiming that the Japanese did not know about the association between monkeys and racism.