Yahoo's Japan sales and profits double

[bill]

An article on CNN [asia.cnn.com] says Yahoo Japan is doing well. Most of this jump is not due to the directory, but a newly introduced ADSL package they're now offering here. They bought out an ailing but promising broadband provider, dramatically cut rates, and have become a real powerhouse provider in a relatively short amount of time.

[EliteWeb]

congrats to them (:

[bill]

Seems all may not be so rosy afterall...the company's share price plunged on Tuesday by more than 9 percent to ¥3.63 million as investors reacted negatively to its second quarter (July-September) earnings report released on Monday
afternoon.

What triggered selling seemed to be a sense of disappointment over declining advertising sales. Despite Yahoo's impressive debut of their ADSL service in September, and its rapid growth since then (with 132,167 subscribers as of October 5), many analysts say that Yahoo's main business is still advertising, and a decline in that business is crucial.

[daikon]

I am using Yahoo's new ASDL service at home here in Tokyo. It's called YahooBB, the BB standing for broad band. And broad it is: 10mbs down, 900kbps up. Costs only $25 per month. The only down side I've yet to see is that they don't seem to offer an SMTP server for outgoing mail, and therefore force you to use web-based mail like hotmail or YahooMail. Other than that it rocks.

Unfortunately, the word on the street is that this service is expected to tank. A good source of info on Internet business in Japan is [japaninc.com...] They have both an offline magazine and a couple of mailing lists. I am in no way associated with them, other than being a reader.

[bill]

10mbs?! I waited 3 years just to get cable internet access and it's nowhere near that speed. The good news was that they dropped their fees from ¥6,000/month to about ¥3,500 due to all the dirt cheap ADSL deals like Yahoo's popping up all over Japan.

You could run your own SMTP server. We had a thread about that mentioned some options here [webmasterworld.com].

J@pan Inc. is a pretty good read. I've been a subscriber since the mid-90s when they were Computing Japan.

Yahoo Japan actually made a big stink recently and were threatening to sue NTT (the big phone company monopoly in Japan) over their lack of access to ADSL setups. Off the top of my head there were close to half-a-million signups for Yahoo's BB service, but only 100,000 or so had been setup... It looks like NTT is trying to squeeze Yahoo out of this market.

[daikon]

Set up my own SMTP server you say? Ah, great idea, bill. Thanks for the info.

[mukounosou]

If anyone here is interested in sharing knowledge about YahooBB, please join the English speaking YahooBB users mailing list at [groups.yahoo.com...]

I've just started it so we need members!

Thanks

Mukounosou

[mukounosou]

Re: YahooBB's smtp server

They do have one. If you still don't have the details, mail me and I'll give them to you.

All this info is on the YahooBB site - it's just a bit hard to locate. It would be easier if my kanji recognition were not so rudimentary ...

Mukounosou

[daikon]

Really? That's great, mukounosou. I'd email you, but your address is not listed in your profile....

Cheers.

[bill]

Use the StickyMail link at the top of the page. That's our e-mail system here.

[daikon]

All set. Thanks.

[bill]

Things aren't looking good for the Yahoo! Japan broadband...

Shares in Internet investor Softbank Corp and Yahoo Japan Corp fell on Friday after reports the government would take steps to regulate their jointly run high-speed Internet access ADSL service.

article here [biz.yahoo.com]

[bill]

Softbank sells Yahoo shares [news.com.com] CNet

[SoftBank]...trimmed its stake in Yahoo to 14.3 percent from 17 percent but would stay its top shareholder.

The article also mentions that Yahoo is trying to reinforce its ADSL service.

[Woz]

A ZDnet article [zdnet.com.com] about online services in MacDonalds [webmasterworld.com] contains a snippet stating the Yahoo ADSL service as having "fallen short of initial subscriber targets."

Onya
Woz

[bill]

Yeah, they're not able to keep up with demand because NTT, the former telecommunications monopoly & and rival, won't give them timely access to their switches... SoftBank was threatening to sue a while back, but I haven't heard much about that case recently... then again Japanese courts are famous for their turtle-like speed.