One of Japan's leading mobile network's, KDDI, has announced a new lineup of smartphones and services.
Local media reports suggested that the network would soon begin to offer the iPhone to its customers but KDDI president Takashi Tanaska refused to comment.
"From last week there have been various articles in the press, and many people have been asking us about this. All I can do is apologise again and again. I have no comment about any of this."
In Japan, KDDI's main mobile operator rival Softbank have held exclusivity rights over Apple products, and have gained ground in terms of users on KDDI because of it.
KDDI's lead over Softbank has also dwindled because it has been slow to shift away from traditional phones.
But Tanaka told reporters that his company would accelerate its shift to the high-feature phones.
KDDI's new lineup includes the HTC EVO 3D and Motorola Photon, also available internationally.
It also includes several new handsets made in Japan, that have technologies aimed at the local market.
Fujitsu's Arrows Z phone has a special interface for entering Japanese characters drawn by hand on the touchscreen.
A new smartphone from Sharp's Aquos line has a sub-screen that lets users check the time and other basic functions, without turning on the main display and draining battery life.
The subscreen turns into control buttons when the phone is in use.
The smarthpones will offer Internet connections through its WiMax service.
WiMax is a high-speed, long-range wireless Internet technology.
KDDI said it will launch services such as video calls over Skype on a specially designed application.
It will also host a service to automatically save pictures taken with phones and deliver them to computers through a tie-up with Eye-Fi, the maker of wireless-enabled memory cards.
The new phones and services will be available by the end of this year.
For IDG News Service, this is Jay Alabaster in Tokyo.
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