Tech & Biz

Nokia to Pull Out of Japanese Market

by Jordan Yerman | November 28, 2008 at 07:44 am

128 views | 7 Recommendations | 2 comments

Nokia has announced it is no longer making mobile phones for the Japanese market. This was surprising to me; it would be like hearing Ford say that it would no longer make pickup trucks for North America.

However, on closer examination, the move makes sense: Nokia holds about 40% of the global mobile phone market share, but has not done well in Japan. Between the slow growth (pretty much everyone in Japan has a cell phone already) and tough local competition, Nokia has never quite gotten the foothold it would like.

Nokia will instead focus on remote-control technology for its handsets, so users could operate other electronic devices with their phones. Like in that James Bond flick where Pierce Brosnan drives his car from the back seat with his mobile. Only probably not that ambitious.

The Finnish phone maker announced Thursday that it would stop manufacturing cell phones for NTT DoCoMo and Softbank Mobile, but will continue producing its luxury Vertu brand, according to a report by Reuters.

"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.

Even the iPhone has underperformed in Japan.

However, demand has fallen, and many analysts don't believe Apple will even reach half its goal of selling I million units in Japan.

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Uwe Paschen

at 08:22 on November 28th, 2008

That is to bad, Nokia is the only one making a decent translator phone for Kanjy character. I was looking forward to that, since 2046 Kanjy characters can be a chalenge even if one speaks Japanese and can read the Hiragana and Katagana, the Kanjy characters take years to learn and master. One problem may be that cell phones here do not have the brand name on the phone as such, but rather DoCoMo or KDDI and only a letter and some numbers that can ID the maker.

The new Nokia for China has a Camera through with the Kanjy can be read and translated in to Roman characters, some thing that would have been nice for Japan's Kanjy and Korean Characters as well.

Laughing-Samurai (not verified)

at 15:52 on November 28th, 2008

I don't trust any software when translating from English into Kanji, mostly you get very strange translations. Even when translating from Romanji into Kamji, which is the normal Japanese way, you sometimes have to misspell a word or use another word to get the correct Kanji character.

If you can't read Kanji how would you know that you have the correct translation. Although I read Kanji, I prefer to use my secretary most of the time. I send her an email in English which she translates into Kanji and sends. When she receives a reply she translates into English and forwards to me.

I recommend that you use a secretary and be careful with any machine translation.

The iPhone is a better choice than Nokia, and now the price is very good.