Nokia, the world's biggest cellphone maker, said on Thursday it will stop selling mobile phones in Japan except for its luxury Vertu brand after struggling to expand its presence.
Finnish Nokia has previously said it will cut costs 'decisively', expecting global mobile phone sales to shrink next year amid an economic downturn.
Japan is the world's fourth largest mobile phone market after the United States, China and India. But it makes up only a tiny part of sales at Nokia, whose products have failed to lure customers away from more sophisticated Japanese ones.
Mobile phone companies also see limited scope for growth in Japan, where 109 million subscribers, or some 85 percent of the population, already own a mobile phone. In addition, a new sales model based on higher handset prices is expected to slash annual mobile phone sales in Japan by some 20 percent.
"In the current global economic climate, we have concluded that the continuation of our investment in Japan-specific localized products is no longer sustainable," Nokia executive vice president Timo Ihamuotila said in a statement.
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Interesting news. I have heard gaijins in Japan complain that Japanese phones are no good, but here is story suggesting that Japanese phones are superior. Anyone out there familiar with both types of phones wish to comment?
It just boils down to what people expect from their phones. The differences between US and Japaneses are starting to converge but remember, cellphone-based web browsing is relatively new for Westerners but completely common-place for the Japanese. Many Japanese use their cellphones to post blogs/diary entries/novels(!), read the news, receive coupons etc. The Japanese cellphone has managed to permeate every facet of life in Japan while largely US cellphones are still thought of as direct communication devices.
So foreigners may view a lot of the features on Japanese cellphones as superfluous, but for many Japanese their cellphone is their alternative to a laptop essentially. Of course if you look at the success of the iPhone, a new trend for multimedia smorgasbord cellphones would suggest the "Japanification" of the US cellphone industry. Very interesting stuff.