Why Japan's oh-so-smart phones can't go global

Tokyo
The Economic Times
At first glance, Japanese cell phones are a gadget-lover’s dream: Ready for Internet and e-mail, they double as credit cards, boarding passes and even body-fat calculators.

But it is hard to find anyone in Chicago or London using a Japanese phone like a Panasonic, a Sharp or an NEC. Despite years of dabbling in overseas markets, Japan’s handset makers have little presence beyond the country’s shores.

"Japan is years ahead in any innovation. But it hasn’t been able to get business out of it," said Gerhard Fasol, president of the Tokyo-based IT consulting firm, Eurotechnology Japan.

The Japanese have a name for their problem: Galapagos syndrome.

Japan’s cell phones are like the endemic species that Darwin encountered on the Galapagos islands – fantastically evolved and divergent from their mainland cousins – explains Takeshi Natsuno, who teaches at Tokyo’s Keio University.

This year, Natsuno, who developed a popular wireless Internet service called i-Mode, assembled some of the best minds in the field to debate how Japanese cell phones can go global.

"The most amazing thing about Japan is that even the average person out there will have a super-advanced phone," said Natsuno. "So we’re asking, ‘Can’t Japan build on that advantage?' "

The only Japanese handset maker with any meaningful global share is Sony Ericsson, and that company is a London-based joint venture between a Japanese electronics maker and a Swedish telecommunications firm.

And Sony Ericsson has been hit by big losses. Its market share was just 6.3 percent in the first quarter of 2009, behind Nokia of Finland, Samsung Electronics and LG of South Korea, and Motorola of Illinois.