Softbank Corp. will offer new customers Apple Inc.'s iPhone 3GS with 16 gigabytes of memory for free or the 32-gigabyte model for half price.

The offer, available between Friday and Jan. 31 for customers signing a two-year contract, will lower the monthly payments for the 32-gigabyte model to ¥480, from ¥960, the Tokyo-based carrier says on its Web site.

Softbank's new pricing is part of a campaign to spur demand during the yearend shopping season and follows reductions in February, Naoki Nakayama, a company spokesman, said Wednesday.

"This doesn't seem to be a price cut stemming from poor sales," said Yusuke Tsunoda, an analyst at Tokai Tokyo Securities Co. who has a "strong outperform" rating on Softbank.

"The iPhone's price is a bottleneck and Softbank is looking to lower those barriers to purchase."

Softbank, which has been offering the iPhone since July 2008, aims to attract customers to handsets that can surf the Web and download games and software to bolster revenue from data services. Softbank faces increasing competition from cheaper data plans announced by NTT DoCoMo Inc. and KDDI Corp.

DoCoMo said last month it plans to add a second model using Google Inc.'s Android operating system as early as next spring to compete with Softbank's iPhone. DoCoMo in May slashed minimum data charges on some plans to ¥490 per month from ¥1,029 to bolster demand for data services.