Vodafone Quitting Japan

dimension6 writes "Reuters is reporting that Vodafone, the world's largest mobile phone operator, is quitting business in Japan. Vodafone has been having a difficult time since they entered the Japanese market, a result of many blunders such as introducing Nokia brick phones where flip-phones are the norm and being slow to adopt 3G technology widely used by its competitors. Vodafone claimed that being part of the most advanced mobile phone market helped boost their sales elsewhere, but few Japanese-market phones have made it to other countries. The Japanese Vodafone division is likely to be bought by Softbank, the largest ISP in Japan."

Comments

And are you a typical Japanese customer?

[SmallFurryCreature]

You don't sound like one to me, you sound like an ex-pat who can't wait to get back to civilization.

While I don't doubt there are a lot of you world wide it is not a market a vodaphone could give a shit about.

Everything you say is confirming that the Japanese do not have the same tastes as westerners. You are a perfect vodaphone customer, the japanese are not.

Vodafone forgot to adapt and are now bowing out to save further problems while they can still recoop their money. It is nothing new. Other western attempts in forms of partnerships have also failed. Japan != the west and the west != Japan. Just look at the success by KPN (dutch telecom who partned with docomo(?)) in bringing iMode to Holland.

It ain't exactly running wild because they totally screwed it up. The west is used to the freedom of the real internet so KNP answered by giving it the limited iMode and then barely filling it with anything worthwhile. People try it, find nothing they like/want/need and then never use it again.

Doing business internationally is very hard. Frankly I am not suprised that western telecoms have a hard time in japan. Japan seems to be a bit of a go getter in mobile communications while the european telecoms tend to be dinosaurs who think a 10 year planning phase is moving dangerously fast.