Foundation: 1981
Headquarters: Minato Ward, Tokyo
Founder and CEO: Masayoshi Son
Executive Summary: Created by its charismatic founder Masayoshi Son as a computer parts store, SoftBank expanded into publishing, internet, telecommunications, investment, and many other fields, usually with considerable success. The company was founded in 1981, when Son returned to Japan after graduating from University of California Berkeley. While abroad, Son made around US$2 million by patenting an electronic translator sold to Sharp Corporation, and from importing Japanese arcade games. Using the funds from his stateside ventures, Son established the company as a PC software distributor. He got in contact with companies such as Hudson Software, Personal Media, and Milky Way, which were mainly focusing on hobby and video game software. His firm eventually landed an exclusive deal supplying software to Joshin Denki, the biggest PC specialist store in Japan. After securing the Joshin Denki deal, many other department stores and electronic shops became his customers, hoping to cash in on the growing market. Six months after the company was founded, SoftBank ventured into the publishing business, creating Oh! PC and Oh! MZ magazines. Originally, this decision was unsuccessful and the magazines drained profits from the software arm of the company. Son then redesigned the magazine, increasing the size, and they began selling out with demand surging for the thicker copies. Oh! PC had a circulation of 140,000 copies by 1989. The following year, the company was renamed SoftBank Corporation. The company continued to expand and went public in 1994 valued at US$3 billion. The corporation made major purchases of Ziff Davis Media and the controlling stake of Yahoo! Japan which it helped establish. By the end of the decade, SoftBank sold Ziff Davis and took Yahoo! Japan public. In 2001, the firm offered faster internet speeds and cheaper fees through the establishment of Yahoo! BB. The new millennium also pushed the company into the mobile phone industry with another colossal purchase: buying Vodafone for over US$15 billion. The new mobile branch initially struggled until it scored an exclusivity deal with Apple. Between 2008 and 2011 the only place to purchase an iphone in Japan was through a SoftBank store. The overwhelming success of the iphone gave the company a huge competitive edge over other firms by securing lasting Apple customers. The ipad continued the success story with its release in 2010. SoftBank made history by making Japan’s single-largest foreign acquisition to date when it bought 78% of the Sprint Nextel Corporation. Today, the firm owns 84% of Sprint. Softbank also ventured into baseball, purchasing the Fukuoka Daiei Hawks, renaming them the Fukuoka SoftBank Hawks. In addition to sports, the firm is involved in the promotion of renewable energy through the SB Energy Corporation. The company changed its name again in 2015 to SoftBank Group. Recently, SoftBank entered into the robotics industry, developing Pepper which can recognize human faces and emotions. To add to this, the company has entered into an agreement to purchase Boston Dynamics. Besides robotics, the SoftBank Vision Fund was established to fund various startups, including companies developing new AI technologies. SoftBank’s annual income is in the range of US$85 billion.
