Vodafone Japan sells to Softbank for $15 billion
Vodafone, enter Japan: check. Stick around a while, not really gaining traction: check. Release a slew of phones that don't entirely appeal to the Japanese market: check. Pull out for 15 billion: double-check. Looks like they took 15b for a 97.7% stake in the biz from Softbank, who apparently also operate the infamous ultra high speed Yahoo Japan Internet service. What's Softbank's first order of business having acquired Voda? Slash prices, man; looks like they want to get down and dirty with KDDI and DoCoMo. Whether they'll actually be able to pull off a tangle with those two, however, is another question entirely.
