CEO Message

Forty years have passed since SoftBank's foundation. At such a juncture, I am truly humbled to be President & CEO of SoftBank Corp., a core operating company of the SoftBank Group.

In the next ten years, I am sure we will see social change accelerating at speeds beyond our imaginations, and 5G and AI will drive this transformation. We will live in a society where all things will be connected to the Internet, and we will enjoy convenient services that fully optimize themselves. With 5G telecommunications infrastructure serving as a foundation, AI-integrated platforms of even greater sophistication will make this society a reality. Digital platforms will be the new infrastructure that underpins our future society and be a source of transformation.

In March this year, with the completion of the business integration of LINE, the new Z Holdings group joined the SoftBank Corp. group. This means our group is now Japan's largest telecommunications and IT group in terms of customer touchpoints. We have 37 million mobile subscribers, 80 million Yahoo! JAPAN users, 35 million PayPay users and 86 million LINE users. In addition to our service platforms for consumers, we also possess digital platforms in new business areas, including enterprise IoT solutions, smart cities, mobility and healthcare. More than anything, our strengths lie in our close connections to consumers through our nationwide retail network and the capabilities of our enterprise sales team, which makes proposals to business customers in various industries.

As CEO, I will synthesize our strengths and make SoftBank a “comprehensive digital platformer” to support infrastructure for the society of tomorrow and continuously provide new value. By listening more to our customers, co-creating with an even greater number of partner companies and further accelerating collaboration with group companies, we will offer services only SoftBank is capable of providing, and become the technology company most needed by society.

Our “Beyond Carrier” strategy will continue to be a pillar of our growth strategy. We will build on the achievements of our previous CEO, Ken Miyauchi, who brought us a strengthened telecom business foundation, an expansion of non-telecom businesses and a strengthened group structure with the addition of Z Holdings to our group and other initiatives. Building on this solid foundation, we will aim for even more business growth with technology fueling our evolution.

Telecommunication services have become a lifeline in our current era. As a provider of this indispensable infrastructure, our responsibility as a carrier is to provide services that are stable and secure and constantly strive to have the best telecommunications network possible. Not only will we rapidly roll out 5G infrastructure nationwide; we will also pursue projects like HAPS, which utilizes a stratospheric telecommunications platform to provide Internet connectivity anywhere in the world.

2021 marked ten years since the Great East Japan Earthquake occurred. After the earthquake struck, we rushed to the affected areas and I led our network recovery efforts. I regret and will never forget the deficiencies in our network recovery operations at the time. Learning from this experience, we have since worked to expand both our network area coverage and resiliency while fully utilizing our ingenuity repeatedly. We will continue to build robust and resilient network infrastructure and strengthen support measures for those affected when disasters strike.

SoftBank's corporate philosophy, “Information Revolution — Happiness for everyone,” and its venture spirit to constantly take on new challenges lies at the core of SoftBank's management. Looking back, I believe SoftBank was able to expand into the fixed-line, Internet and mobile communications businesses while continually introducing advanced technologies and business models because it aspired to be the company most needed by society. I will continue to act on this conviction, and boldly take on new challenges in the SoftBank spirit while aiming for even greater heights and business growth.

April 2021
President & CEO
SoftBank Corp.
Junichi Miyakawa