WebProNews

A company with “soft” in its name might be tempting fate - poor financial performances would be all too appropriate.  Softbank isn’t having that problem, though, and instead, the Japanese telecommunications giant saw its net profits rise by 221 percent over a certain period.

In the six months ending September 30th, Softbank’s profits reached 46.46 billion yen.  In the same time span in 2006, the company only managed to hit 14.44 billion yen.  “Impressive” is something of an understatement, since those amounts correspond to around $405 million and $126 million, respectively.

In other areas of growth, the number of Softbank’s mobile customers rose by around 12 percent, and the number of its outlets increased by roughly 30 percent.

So what is Softbank?  To simplify the matter: Softbank is a major player in Asian telecommunications and media markets.  Also, although there are some rather complicated relationships present, a diagram from Softbank itself nicely illustrates the company’s relationship to Yahoo, Yahoo China, the Alibaba Group, and Alibaba.com.  .

As for the future . . . Softbank told the AP “it’s expecting to book investment gains in the third quarter from the listing of its subsidiary Alibaba.com Ltd. on the Hong Kong market.”