Why Nokia is pulling out of Japan?

Surprising news last week was the buzz that Nokia is sort of pulling out of the Japanese market for the majority of its products. Care to guess why Nokia conceded the battle on mobile phones in Japan?

Nokia Executive VP Timo Ihamuotil was quoted saying “We have concluded that the continuation of our investment in Japan-specific localised products is no longer sustainable“.

Nokia conquers the global mobile market with about 40% of all handsets in its name but in Japan, Nokia has less than 1% market share. That’s is certainly very small until you learn that only 5% of the mobile phones in Japan are coming from foreign manufacturers. So it’s not just Nokia but every other non-Japanese brand. Just that Nokia was first to call it quits.

Not surprisingly, Nokia will still sell a couple of its high-end phones in Japan — something like the $30,000PHP 1,760,565INR 2,542,494EUR 28,569CNY 218,349-a-pop Nokia Vertu.

Abe Olandres

Abe is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of YugaTech with over 20 years of experience in the technology industry. He is one of the pioneers of blogging in the country and considered by many as the Father of Tech Blogging in the Philippines. He is also a technology consultant, a tech columnist with several national publications, resource speaker and mentor/advisor to several start-up companies.

https://www.yugatech.com

5 Comments

jhay says:

16 years ago

That’s something to admire about the Japanese, they really love their own…brand of phones that is.
- Reply
brb says:

16 years ago

The Japanese mobile phone system is very advanced and specialized and Nokia doesn’t offer anything that local brands can’t do. The only Nokia phones I see here are those used by foreigners and even that is rare.

Mobile phones in Japan are used to play music, watch TV, pay electronically at stores, scan and digitize text, read manga, etc., besides surf the internet. Not even the iPhone can meet the demand of the typical Japanese consumer.

Having said that, I like the simplicity of Nokia and Apple’s designs but I don’t think simplicity is what the Japanese want. They want their phones cheap (preferably free) and packed with features.
- Reply
tinee says:

15 years ago

I agree with brb. I’ve had one Japanese mobile phone when I was there. Im so thrilled I wish I could use all those features in the Philippines. But our country is way too far of technology from them. I’ve never likeed Nokia before, not since E63 was announced. Its very convenient, I need to have one.
- Reply
Jib Halyard says:

15 years ago

the unlocked, grey-market nokia e71 that i use in japan has all those features brb mentions — AND it hasn’t had half its features disabled by the japanese carrier. The Japanese carrier i got my previous nokia 6680 from had made it unable to install apps (without a bit of hacking), or to update firmware. i think nokia would have done a lot better in japan if the local carriers hadn’t been actively sabotaging its product line.
- Reply