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

Same goes for Sweden

[d99-sbr]

They recently decided to pull out of Sweden too. Margins have become razor thin after voice prices fell to a few cents per minute (/$).

Re:Same goes for Sweden

[Dr. Cody]

Then why are their advertisements still on TV?

Trend?

[Kawahee]

Isn't this a general trend? Western companies have a hard time starting up over in Asia. KFC/Nike/etc have just begun to crack the Chinese markets, so it's no surprise (to me) that other companies have had trouble in Japan.

Take Microsoft and the Xbox for example. Playstation has had a good reception outside of Japan, but not vice versa.

Re:Trend?

[omegashenron]

Western companies have a hard time starting up over in Asia.

I agree - however part of the problem is that Western Companies generally don't understand the demographic of their customers, instead they pretend Asia is just like the West eg:

• Vodafone not on a 3g network or offering a flip phone
• Original Xbox not offering as many Japanese RPG's as PS2

It will be interesting to see how XBOX360 fares in Japan when the promised new RPG's come out. At the moment, Gamecube outsells it.

Western companies need to learn that the entire attitude of "Customers will buy what we tell them to" just wont cut it in Asia. Consumers are generally more savvy and wont tolerate crap. As a former unsatisfied vodafone customer - I must say that I delight in seeing this failure of theirs.

Re:Trend?

[macshit]

This potrayal of herd-mind (or hive-mind?) Asians on Slashdot has got to be the next big Slashdot meme. While it is true that Asians have historically more community minded that the West, community minded != groupthink.

Perhaps not, but it's absolutely true that there's a huge group-think thing going on, at least in Japan and Korea (the two countries I'm familiar with). ["Community minded", hahaha, now there's a euphemism for you! As far as I can see, the main factor is an unusually high degree of risk-aversion.]

This isn't to say that everybody is like that in those two countries, or that group-think isn't a factor in other countries -- obviously neither is true -- but stereotypes often have a basis in reality, I think this is one fo those cases.

Anyone know what Vodafone's Japan market share is?

[Ogemaniac]

I currently live in Japan and use Vodafone. It seems to me that they hold over a 30% market share among the hundred-odd phone numbers in my cell. In general, the four major companies (docomo at the high end, vodafone and au in the middle, tsuka at the bottom) seem about equally popular.

I don't think this sale is due to failure. Rather, it is just one business selling off a decent little piece to another corporation who wants it more. It happens all the time.

Btw, to whoever said "Japanese cells are 3 years ahead of everyone else", I would respectfully disagree. I'd rather have an American cell. Why? Because I hardly ever use the billion and one stupid bells and whistles in my Japanese phone. What I want to do is be able to talk on my cell phone, which is absurdly expensive in Japan. For nearly $40/month, you only get ninety minutes (and your billion and two text messages and emails eat into this time)! Nor do I find the reception better in Japan than in comparable areas of the US. Reception here is near universal in the major cities unless you are underground, gets a little spotty as you move into the burbs (especially indoors), and fails quite often in the countryside unless you happen to be at a high elevation. Same is true in the states, except we have less area that is city and more that is burb and countryside.

Japanese cells aren't better. Rather, Japanese spend lots more money on them and buy all the bells and whistles that 90% of Western users just don't care about.

My wife's Japanese Vodafone phone is sort of lame

[Rocketship Underpant]

My wife got a Vodafone keitai here in Japan. While it's one of the cool folding phones, Vodafone Japan seems to have the Canadian/American disease of locking down all the cool hardware features. They've made it so it's impossible to transfer files with Bluetooth, for example -- even though the phone is a full Bluetooth device with all the file transfer protocols. Also, battery life is pretty bad.

Re:How long before they pull out of the US?

[Sigurd_Fafnersbane]

With quad-band or multi-band phones the frequency difference on the handset side is not that bad.

A more difficult thing for Vodafone is that the infrastructure side is fully different.

The services Vodafone can provide their customers in the US is different from what they can offer in the rest of the world and their services do not cross the different networks. They can not build a global brand which is also visible in that they do not promote the name Vodafone in the US.

If there is no economy of scale and no Brand benefit in a presence on the US market the investment only makes sense if they get a higher return on the US investment than what they pay in interest on all the money they have borrowed to build the rest of their network.

Re:Brick phones??

[gilgongo]

I work for a UK company that does a lot of user testing for the Vodafone embedded client software. Last year we ran tests in Japan with a Nokia 6600 (although Voda didn't plan to ship anything there on that hardware). It's a brick even by Western standards. On the video playbacks, you can see the jaws of several users dropping to the floor when they were shown the device at the start of the test!

Uhh

[CaptainZapp]

I associate clamshell mobiles with built-in cameras and similar nonsense.

Do I get bonus points for using a 9300, even though it folds, but it doesn't have a camera?