June 23 (Bloomberg) -- Softbank Corp., which won the right to introduce Apple Inc.'s iPhone in Japan, said it will offer the mobile phone for as low as 23,040 yen ($215) in the country.

Customers will be able to pay for the handsets, which will go on sale July 11, over two years, Tokyo-based Softbank said in a statement on its Web site. Users will have to enroll in a 5,985 yen data plan and pay a monthly 980 yen basic charge, it said.

Softbank, Japan's third-largest mobile-phone carrier, looks to the touch-screen device, which combines an e-mail-equipped handset with the iPod media player, to help maintain its lead in user gains over NTT DoCoMo Inc. and KDDI Corp. The iPhone's Internet features will help lure customers from the rivals, Softbank President Masayoshi Son told reporters in Tokyo today.

Subscribers to Softbank's service increased 17 percent throughout the 12 months to March 31, compared with DoCoMo's 1.5 percent and KDDI's 7.6 percent, according to numbers compiled by the Telecommunications Carriers Association. The company also attracted more users than DoCoMo and KDDI for 12 straight months until April, according to data from the carriers.

Softbank will probably sell 1 million iPhones in the first year, helping it increase the lead, Hiroshi Yamashina, a Tokyo- based analyst at Nikko Citigroup Ltd., said in a report dated June 11.

The 16-gigabyte iPhone will be sold for 34,560 yen, Softbank said in the release. The handset prices cited today are only for new subscribers, with existing Softbank customers paying more, Son said.

DoCoMo, which has been in discussions with Apple to sell the iPhone, ``hasn't given up yet,'' President Ryuji Yamada said at a separate news briefing in Tokyo today.

To contact the reporter on this story: Pavel Alpeyev in Tokyo at palpeyev@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: June 23, 2008 04:16 EDT