Vodafone May Cut Japan Stake

The RED HERRING reports that Vodafone is "in talks with Japan’s Softbank, a communications firm, over a potential sale of a controlling interest in its Japanese division on Friday, signaling the United Kingdom-based carrier’s continued difficulties in the Japanese market."

According to the article, Vodafone has been struggling and is "a distant third after NTT DoCoMo and KDDI" amongst Japanese cellphone carriers with about "15 million subscribers in the roughly 75-million Japanese mobile phone market."

Charles Golvin at Forrester Research said, "Vodafone doesn’t like to be anything but first or second. They were not able to be as successful as they wanted to be."