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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."
Quite an interesting and unexpected turn of events...
Vodafone has been going steadily downhill since their foray in to the market here. Their entry point was by buying out J-Phone and rebranding it as Vodafone K.K.. J-Phone was originally a division of JR, the national rail company. An interesting side effect of their original ownership was that in the early days of cell-access their networks first expanded along the railway networks giving them quite effective penetration even though their coverage was in fact quite spotty. J-Phone never quite reached the market-size of DoCoMo (the cellular division of NTT - the national telco), but was effectively their main competition with a reputation for innovation, which had cornered the younger "cooler" demographic. They were one of the first here to provide Java enabled phones and as the original originators of the camera-phone they have made their mark worldwide. In fact one of the last phones they brought to market before the buyout was the first phone to crack the 1 megapixel mark.
No wonder Vodaphone wanted a piece.
Some vodaphone insiders here have speculated that the main reason for the company's gradual descent has been the resistance of "old-Japan" upper management to outside pressures, almost more on principle than on particular merit, although some of those outside ideas have seemed to lack local market knowledge, amongst other things. Vodafone stagnated at a crucial point unfortunately - they were technologically ahead of the pack - their stall allowed competitors to take up the slack and old behemoth Docomo to pull ahead as many customers returned to DoCoMo for the newest gimmicks while vodaphone coasted...
Its not hard to still spot J-phone branded phones around which speaks volumes about the strength of the original company in this "new and shiny" crazed market. I actually think this is a good thing - if Vodafone was only as commited as a three year ownership and doesn't have the kahoonas to turn things around, its only their loss. Hopefully this is the begining of a return to their former glory and I'll finally be able to rid myself of this stupid AU phone...