Google has licensed Gmail to Japanese mobile operator KDDI Corp.
The email service will be branded by KDDI and work on the “auone.jp” domain. Google will provide the backend for the service and account holders will have the same functionality as provided by Gmail itself, including 2GB of storage.
The announcement continues a recent string of deals in Asia for Google as it attempts to build market share and presence in countries it does not dominate. More recently, Google has licensed search to a number of Chinese search portals.
KDDI is currently Japan’s second largest mobile operator behind NTT DoCoMo. Third ranked mobile operator Softbank owns Yahoo Japan, which according to Smart Money is not as strong in search, but leads Google in other services including email.
I wish my company would use GMail.
Google has been very successful and expanding to Japan will increase their presents. And an increase presences will eventually lead to increase revenue.
Who will be Google’s competitors in the Japanese search market?
Gmail didn’t win in germany….
I wonder why the domain name is not gmail.jp?
I think this is the case when name can make additional users from the nothing.
@BeingParents
In Japan, Yahoo is the No. 1 portal AND search engine.
Unfortunately, I am with Softbank so I cannot use Gmail on au….
That’s a great move from Google. Local companies always have more insights than you do. Yahoo can only be successful in Japan and Taiwan because of Softbank and Kimo respectively.
@Flash
“au” is KDDI’s cellphone service brand name for years. And now, they are trying to integrate their network services under “au one” brand. Therefore, they are to serve their mail service with auone.jp domain name. Surely Google would like to keep gmail.jp domain for their own use in future.
The east Asian people don’t use google excessively.
Japan: Yahoo JAPAN! is No.1.
China: Baidu (the Chinese Search Engine) is No.1.
Korea: NAVER (the Korean Search Engine, portal) is No.1.
When is Gmail going to come out of beta? Before or after spreading to every single country on Earth?