SoftBank-backed mobile payment service PayPay will ban the use of outside credit cards on its app later this year in favor of its proprietary card, as the company seeks to close the gap with rival Rakuten Group in credit card transactions. (Nikkei)

Japanese investor SoftBank Group reported Tuesday that it sank into a deep loss for the October-December quarter, slammed by the global plunge in technology shares. (business-standard.com)

Japanese technology investor SoftBank Group Corp. reported on Friday a 3 trillion yen ($21 billion) profit for the July-September quarter, a sharp reversal from its loss a year ago. (AP)

Toyota Motor and around nine other Japanese companies will team up with the government to launch a new entity to develop and make next-generation semiconductors, Nikkei has learned, aiming to establish manufacturing processes by the late 2020s. (Nikkei)

Keita Nakagawa singled in the winning run in the ninth inning as the Pacific League champion Orix Buffaloes advanced to the Japan Series with a 3-2 walk-off win over the SoftBank Hawks on Saturday. (Kyodo)

SoftBank Corp. said Tuesday it has launched a subscription service that lets customers drive a used car at a fixed monthly rate, as it tries to diversify its business portfolio amid a slow growth in the flagship mobile phone business. (Kyodo)

A decade ago, the realization that mobile telecommunications networks are a capital-intensive, low-margin, mature, congested and sticky business led SoftBank Group's Masayoshi Son to shift direction and embark on an ambitious, though now foundering, global investment spree in startup e-commerce platforms with limited hard assets, such as WeWork. (Nikkei)

Japanese technology company SoftBank Group posted a USD 23.4 billion loss in the April-June quarter as the value of its investments sank amid global worries about inflation and interest rates. (dailyexcelsior.com)

SoftBank has raised as much as $22bn in cash from deals that would sharply reduce its stake in Alibaba over the coming years, as the Japanese investor responds to a market downturn that has ravaged its technology portfolio. (Nikkei)

KDDI Corp. said Friday it will pay damages to 35.89 million customers as a form of "apology" following a major service disruption that spanned several days earlier this month. (Nikkei)

Cash is king, especially in a bear market. Japanese investors should rejoice that companies are returning more to their shareholders. (Wall Street Journal)

Tadashi Yanai, founder and chief of Japanese clothing retail chain Uniqlo, has regained his title as the richest person in Japan even as a global economic slowdown has eroded his wealth sharply, according to international business magazine Forbes Asia's latest list of the 50 richest people in Japan. (abs-cbn.com)

SoftBank Group’s top executives Masayoshi Son saw steep cuts in their paychecks as the Japanese conglomerate marked a historic loss for its vision fund unit. (WION)

TOKYO, Japan: A new high-density electric battery developed in Japan has the potential to power electric airplanes, according to industry officials. (bignewsnetwork.com)

In early March, Rakuten executives Hiroshi Mikitani and Tareq Amin returned to Barcelona, the site of their fateful first meeting. On the sidelines of the Mobile World Congress in 2018, Amin, then an executive at Indian telecom Reliance Jio, had sold Rakuten founder Mikitani on the idea of building Japan's fourth mobile network and using a then-untested technology to do it. (Nikkei)

Nearly two years before Japanese fashion titan Yusaku Maezawa embarked on his recent tourist visit to the International Space Station, he made global headlines for launching a worldwide search for a “life partner” to go to the moon with him. (kesq.com)

American automaker General Motors says it is acquiring SoftBank's $2.1 billion stake in its autonomous car venture Cruise. (Japan Today)

In 1967, the WABOT-project was started at Waseda University Japan. In 1972, the first android, the WABOT-1 made its appearance to the world. (TTI - English)

SoftBank Group Chairman and CEO Masayoshi Son on Tuesday said he plans to take U.K. semiconductor design company Arm public in what would be "the largest IPO in semiconductor history," after a deal to sell it to U.S. chipmaker Nvidia was scrapped on regulatory pushback. (Nikkei)

SoftBank's $66bn sale of U.K.-based chip business Arm to Nvidia collapsed on Monday after regulators in the U.S., U.K. and EU raised serious concerns about its effects on competition in the global semiconductor industry, according to three people with direct knowledge of the transaction. (Nikkei)

Shinji Mizushima, a famed baseball-themed manga artist known for such works as "Dokaben" and "Abu-san," died of pneumonia on Jan. 10, his management office said Monday. He was 82. (Nikkei)

Yahoo Japan will allow its 8,000 employees to work from anywhere in the country and even commute by plane when they need to come to the office. (Nikkei)

Japanese billionaire Masayoshi Son’s SoftBank is investing $150 million in Asia’s busiest metaverse platform, the nascent but sizzling virtual world where people work and play through avatars. (forbes.com)

SoftBank Group Corp. sank into red ink for the July-September period, dragged down by losses on its investments in China, the Japanese technology conglomerate said Monday. (wokv.com)

Japan's top three mobile carriers stopped or will stop charging customers contract cancelation fees, with SoftBank Corp becoming the last to decide on such a plan amid the government's efforts to spur competition in the mobile phone market. (Japan Today)