Nokia to pull out of Japan market

Nokia, the world's largest cell phone maker, plans to stop making phones for the Japan market, one of the largest in the world.

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.

While Nokia has a 40 percent global share, the Japanese market has been a tough nut to crack, the report notes. Some 85 percent of the population already owns cell phones, which tend to be part of third-generation networks that sport advanced features, such as TV broadcasting and electronic payment functions, according to the report.

Even Apple's iPhone 3G has had difficulty making in-roads in the Japan market. Apple sold about 200,000 phones in the first two months it was available in Japan, according to a September report in The Wall Street Journal that cited data from market-research firm MM Research Institute. However, demand has fallen, and many analysts don't believe Apple will even reach half its goal of selling 1 million units in Japan.

Meanwhile, Nokia also announced plans to create a platform that will allow people to use their mobile phones to control their home electronics, and security and energy management systems. The Nokia Home Control Center is designed to help people reduce their carbon footprint by allowing them to remotely manage their home's energy consumption.

"We want to create an open solution where external partners can develop their own solutions and services on top of our platform," said Teppo Paavola, chief of Corporate Business Development. "We believe that the mobile device is an ideal interface to control home intelligence, especially when the user is not at home."

Nokia is expected to demonstrate the Nokia Home Control Center at the Nokia World event being held in Barcelona on December 2-3.

[gsmiller88]

Now if only they would pull out of the North American market.

[alphapolitan]

now, now. we need the healthy competition.

[gsmiller88]

I guess that's true, but all the competition in the world won't help if our only wireless providers are Verizon and AT&T.

[heymikemason]

Yeah, good idea. Who needs quality phones with innovative features from the world's number one manufacturer... when we can all just be Steve Jobs' little pet sheep. Then he can make all our choices for us and we can happily continue to have the comfortable illusion of free will by picking our iPhone's color.

[HlLLARY CLITON]

American cell phone networks really suck

[FireFox_User]

At least you got 2 to complaint, Canada only got 1 bad GSM network... and it has a guy name Rogers...

[bakedpatato]

wow, only 200K iPhones in Japan.<br />I would venture a guess that 200k will be sold tomorrow in the US!

[kksing]

Not surprising.<br /><br />The Japanese took one look at the iPhone and decided that it was missing too many features that are considered to be 'must-haves' to be seriously considered by the market (no, not cut &#38; paste... stuff like mobile payment, mobile TV). That's why NTT Docomo refused to deal with Steve. Softbank (being far behind in terms of market share) gambled that the iPhone hype will garner some market share but guess they were wrong...<br /><br />You should take a look at the phone NTT Docomo have in their line up. It's not surprising giants like Nokia or Apple will have a tough time to get into the Japanese market. Now, if only NTT Docomo would bring some of their phones out into the rest of the world...

[bgulien]

Japanes phones operate on a different sort of network.<br />Your GSM won't work there.<br />That's why Nokia is pulling out.<br />And that's why Japanese phones won't work in the US or Europe.

[esquimal]

That's simply not true, because if you've got a multi-frequency 3G phone you'll be able to use your phone in &#38; out of Japan. <br />The Japanese 3G phones, so long as they're multi-frequency, will work in the US (&#38; anywhere else, for that matter) too. <br />Nokia is pulling out of Japan because the Japanese market has everyday street people who are much more accustomed to, &#38; are very comfortable with having all sorts of snazzy features, which is difficult for Nokia to customize for the Japanese market alone, without being able to sell these same features to the rest of the world.

[Nik00]

untrue! I've taken many European 3G phones to Japan and all of them worked, though if you do use one, you would certainly look out of place compared to Japanese phones.. <br /> <br />Features aside: The Japanese market seems to comprise primarily of flip phones, where as in Europe and the US candy bar phones rule the market. <br /> <br />And in Japan the operators (e.g. Docomo) decide on the features and minimum specs for each years "series" of devices allowing them to ensure they all have mobile payment, gps, tv .etc where as in Europe Nokia can through out what ever crap they want and operators are forced to try and sell them.

[artistjoh]

The US market is an easy sell for Apple because the American mobile phone networks are little better than 3rd world standard, and American mobile phone expectations are low, which is odd considering the mobile phone was an American invention (but then that was back when Americans valued science more than these days). <br /><br />In Europe and Australia 3G covers more than 95% of the population and services like MMS, television and so on are not that extraordinary. And Japan and Korea are another step up with the population expecting as standard features that American think of as luxury's or even unnescessary (only Americans debate the usefulness of MMS). <br /><br />Steve Jobs has a much harder job selling iPhones outside the US than in the country for good reason. I love my iPhone but I am daily reminded of its lack of basic features, especially MMS, emoticons, video, and cut &#38; paste. And it took a whole year just to get 3G.

[Triligy]

Please insert one "s" before "uch" in the second sentence of the second paragraph below the picture of the cell phones.

[pjhenry1216]

Actually, they should remove that sentence fragment as its a copy of the last line of the previous paragraph. I'm not sure how it made it through proofreading though...

[Goodbye Helicopter]

Nobody in Japan ever bought a Nokia.<br />Only one carrier even offered them over the last 7 years, and that carrier has had troubled times and changed names itself 3 times.