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

Re:Brick phones??

[Jesus_666]

You don't bitch about the 3210 and I don't bitch about your feature-overladen talking camcorder that can even crash. Seriously, the 3210 is a great mobile: It has a reasonable size, it's pretty robust even compared to other monoblock mobiles and it doesn't come with unnecessary bells and whistles like WAP. I like the 3210. It's a gret device for those people who need their phone for exactly two things: Call someone and be called. For everything else there's notebooks.

Okay, I currently do use a 6210 (a 3210 with WAP and less navigable menus), but that's because I got it for zero cost and my 3210 took a hit to the screen too many.

Re:Brick phones??

[LMariachi]

1) Not getting your screen all scratched up by your keys or change.
2) Not having your other pocket items randomly dialing numbers for you, or not having to punch in a knock code to allow you to dial.
3) A microphone that's somewhere in the vicinity of your mouth instead of pressed against your cheekbone.
3a) Smaller when folded, bigger when open.
4) If it's good enough for the Federation, it's good enough for me.

I believe they should have stayed in it

[rolfwind]

to better themselves. In terms of gadgets, Japan is a tough market with lots of competitors, but like fighting any tough opponent, it would have made them better.

It looks like they kept trying to push themselves onto the Japanese instead of adapting themselves, what with not adopting 3G and using a brickphone profile for their phones. How dumb is that? Was it a result of purely top-down leadership without some bottom-up feedback? I don't know but it looks that way if they are pulling out of Sweden too. Many companies try to do that when entering a foreign market, but they are usually spanked early on for their mistakes. I believe McDonalds serves lamb in India and wherever they go conform their menu to the locality.

But the idea that an American company can't do well in Japan is false, look at Apple:
http://www.businessweek.com/globalbiz/content/mar2 006/gb20060302_547553.htm?campaign_id=topStories_s si_5

Re:Anyone know what Vodafone's Japan market share

[Anonymous Coward]

I live in Japan too. The subscription base in Japan is far from equal. As of end of Jan, Vodafone has 16.7%, AU including Tu-ka 27.8% and the rest 55.9%. Check this site.

http://www.wirelesswatch.jp/index.php

Vodafone is tryig to force the western business model in Japan and they have failied quite badly. The first batch of 3G phones that it introduced were taken from the Western world (Nokia 6650, SE V800, 2 models from Motorola, etc). That was the month they had the worst loss of customers (abt 60,000). Unfortuntely, the Japanese market user base is driven by handsets. If you do not have a good line up, they will be gone the next month. Japanese users are not afraid to change numbers (number portability will come later this year).

You are a typical Vodafone customers whose main use of mobile phone is voice. Japanese mobile martket have moved pass the voice stage where income from data and other broadband services are higher then voice. Vodafone Live! is not as good compared to i-mode and ezweb. They lost a lot of high ARPU customers to the other 2 mobile operators. It is hard for Vodafone to operate successfully in Japan with their global business model that they try to apply to all markets. Top management has changed 2 times last year. They are now having some limited recovery after re-intruducing Japanese specific handsets from Sharp and Toshiba. Expats like yourself are too small in numbers to sustain Vodafone in Japan.

Vodafone Japan first with smart phones

[webagogue]

Cred and disclaimer - I've lived in Tokyo for the last five years. Japanese phones are generally prettier, faster, and more stable than Euro/American phones. Those same phones are also extremely stupid, as opposed to smart, as in "smart phone." I am not a keitai expert and may be wrong but I believe that Vodafone Japan was the first to introduce a smart type phone with the Nokia 6210 (702NK). It is a brick and the screen is ugly, but it runs an OS that has a LOT of software available for it. This was quite a change from the proprietary, useless, custom OS' installed by everyone else. The Nokia 6210, despite its flaws, seemed to be a pretty big hit. In fact, about a year later, Willcom (which has some connection to Docomo, I think) introduced that Sharp PDA/smartphone running Windows Mobile(model number escapes me). And now, in the second half of 2006, Docomo Japan is finally going to bring out a smart phone running Windows Mobile. And as someone who likes to have the option of doing more than on thing with device, I am happy to see it and will likely buy one. Vodafone's move with the 6210 was likely desparate (they've had service issues) but I am glad they made the move and paved the way for alternate models to finally be made available in a very stagnant phone market.