McKinsey report: Japanese vendors lag behind foreign counterparts in China

McKinsey's study finds that Japanese companies are lagging behind European and American counterparts in conquring China markets due to their archaic management style and inability to hire and retain best talent. Examples include failure to reward and promote local staff and using Japanese as their official language in China office. As the result, Japanese products are not enough localized to meet Chinese consumers' tastes. As for the Japanese handset vendors, only Sharp was identified as one out of 24 leading foreign players across 12 consumer-oriented markets in China. Overall, Japanese mobile phones take about 3% of market share in China. Besides Sharp, Toyota, Suntory and Shiseido were mentioned in the report. In the white goods market, Japanese companies have just a 6 per cent market share, the report states. I totally agree with McKinsey as it seems the word globalization was lost in translation in Japan.

Source: FT

DoCoMo is in eco-friendly move with wooden phones

Heading for the ITU Telecom World 2009 event DoCoMo is bringing some phone prototypes dressed up in wooden jackets. Before hearing the steamy "Save trees!" protests, here is a revelation for you from DoCoMo: "The prototypes are made with the surplus wood of trees culled during thinning operations to maintain healthy forests." One of the prototypes is the original Sharp SH04-A in a wooden dress. To make prototypes look nice inside too, DoCoMo put in place a nice graphical UI based on the photographic art of Mikiya Takimoto, a well-known green forest evangelist.

Source: NTT DoCoMo

Nokia expands its Vertu luxury brand lineup in Japan

It was reported that Nokia is expanding its luxury lineup of Vertu phones offered in Japan via Vertu-operated MVNO by adding a Ferrari-themed Ascent TI model. The Ferrari phone is a limited edition model with just 2009 units to be sold worldwide. It is not clear how many models Nokia is planning to sell in Japan. The asking price is 1,200,000 Japanese yen or about 1,200 US dollars. It will go on sale from October 1st in Vertu's flagship store in Ginza, Tokyo. Nokia retreated from Japan's mobile phone market last year, keeping just R&D and Vertu operations. I expect it to be back in some time, say... when LTE deployment is in full swing in Japan?

Source: IT Mobile Media

iPhone 3GS tops the charts in Japan

The recent mobile phone sale figures from GfK show the rise of the iPhone 3GS 32Gb model to the top of the charts. Softbank's marketing campaign under the "iPhone for Everyone" slogan is clearly bearing the fruit. Just two weeks ago iPhone was ranked tenth...

TOP 10 (Sep. 7-13)
1(3) iPhone 3GS 32Gb	Softbank
2(2) Sharp SH-06A	NTT DoCoMo
3(1) Sharp SH001	KDDI au
4(6) Sharp SH-02A	NTT DoCoMo
5(4) SE W64S	KDDI au
6(12) iPhone 3GS 16Gb	Softbank
7(5) Panasonic 830P	Softbank
8(8) Sharp URBANO	KDDI au
9(7) Sharp SH-05A	NTT DoCoMo
10(10) iPhone 3G 8GB	Softbank

Previous Japan's top 10 mobile phone rankings:

• Top 10: Aug. 31-Sep. 6

Source: IT Media Mobile

Fans rejoice as Armani phone lands in Japan

The release of Samsung's 830SC by Softbank is going to be good news for Armani fans in Japan. It's a well-known fact that Japan is heaven for luxury brands and, no doubt this phone will find love with some followers. The question is how big is this niche market? It's also interesting to see how Samsung is trying to penetrate Japanese market. Apparently, one of Samsung's strategic moves is to lure Japanese consumers by putting large magic Emporio Armani letters on mid-range phone.

Phone Specs
Model:	Samsung Emporio Armani 830SC
Carrier:	Softbank
Display:	2.2inch QVGA AM-OLED
Packet data:	HSDPA 3.6Mbps
Bluetooth:	Yes
Browser:	Full HTML
Camera:	3MP
Bands:	WCDMA/GPS 900/1800/1900
Dimensions:	47.4 x 114.9 x 12mm
Weight:	91g
Memory card slot:	microSDHC (up to 8gb)
Colors:	black, white

Source: Softbank

Sharp NetWalker walks into stores

It was reported that Sharp's miniature version of netbook or, as some call it a smartbook, went on sale in selected shops in Japan. The price tag is 44,800 Japanese yen or roughly just a little bit shy of $450 US dollars. Users are required to buy a USB modem to connect it to the Internet while on the go. eMobile is happy to subsidize the device by 40,000 yen if you agree to sign up for a 2-year data contract. It's nice, but no thank you. Why should I pay for the third Internet connection? I have broadband at home and I pay for data plan on my smartphone. Now they are pitching this beauty to get more money from me. Obviously, somebody doesn't get the pains of their customers. I'd consider paying some premium additionally to my smartphone data plan if they allowed me to tether it to my laptop. That will make me a happy camper.

Sharp NetWalker Spec
Model:	Sharp NetWalker PC-Z1
Carrier:	eMobile
CPU:	Freescale i.MX515
Memory:	515MB
Display:	5inch WSVGA Touch TFT LCD
Display res:	1,024X600, 65K colors
Input:	68-key board, touch panel
Internal memory:	4GB (2GB user allocated)
WLAN:	802.11b/g
memory card slot:	microSD/SDHC
USB:	USB2.0
Battery life:	10hours
Dimensions:	161.4 x 108.7 x 24.8
Weight:	409g
OS / Platform:	Linux Ubuntu 9.04 (ARM ver., Sharp modified)
Browser:	Mozilla Firefox
Email:	Mozilla Thunderbird
Organizer:	Mozilla Sunbird
Office docs:	OpenOffice.org 3.0
Graphics:	OpenOffice.org 3.0 Drawing
Media player:	Totem
Text editor:	gedit
Viewer:	Document Viewer
Price tag:	JPY44,800

Source: Sharp

Brand alphabet soup: au to release iida ply

A new design effort is coming this week from KDDI au in the form of PLY, another lifestyle product under the iida brand. The PLY will hit the shelves in au stores on the 17th of September. The designer phone takes on the multi-layer concept, with each layer having a different color. Here is what au had to describe it:

PLY means “lamination layers”—layers of time, culture, technology and design. Everything that encompasses us continually accretes layer upon layer until it finally produces something of new value. To the accumulated layers of design and generational layers of mobile phones, what will be added next? What kind of future will be built upon that accumulation of mobile phone design? The question itself will form the answer, thus producing a shape of the future. This is the entry point of PLY, the new mobile product from iida.

Phone Specs
Model:	PLY
Carrier:	KDDI au
Dimensions:	53 x 102 x 14.5mm
Weight:	127g
Form factor:	Slider
Camera:	3MP
Screen:	3 inch 26oK TFT LCD

Source: au

With 15 million users and 600 million PVs per day Mobage Town is sailing North

Kudos to the folks at Dena who run a successful social network Mobage Town. They've just reached a significant milestone by signing up fifteen million users. They started in 2006 by offering a standard set of social features for mobile phone users and later added a special focus on social gaming experience, which eventually proved to work...According to Dena, fifteen million users generate about 600 million page views in one day, with Mobage Town core users (40%) being in their twenties.

Mobage Town Milestones
05/2007	5 million users
04/2008	10 million users
07/2009	15 million users

Source: Dena

Bar code scanner Windows smartphone from Fujitsu

This niche but powerfull smartphone manufactured by Fujitsu for DoCoMo impressed me after looking under its hood. Oh boy, it's got some power. Of course, it is compatible with any kind of bar code standard you can imagine. Too bad it is limited to some vertical industry use scenarios like transportation or logistics. It should be available in 1Q2010.

Phone Specs
Platform / OS:	Windows Mobile 6.5 Pro
WCDMA:	FOMA 7.2Mbps
WLAN:	802.11 b/g
Bluetooth:	Yes
GPS:	Yes
Water resistant:	IPX5/IPX7
Shock resistant:	IP5X
Touch screen:	2.8inch WQVGA TFT 65K
Memorty:	MicroSD(2GB)/SDHC(8GB)
Camera:	2.0MP
Weight:	180g
Dimensions:	154mm X 51mm X 20mm

Source: NTT DoCoMo

NEC, Casio and Hitachi in joint mobile phone development

Consolidation of Japan's mobile phone sector continues as three domestic handset manufacturers NEC, Casio and Hitachi have decided to jointly produce mobile phones. According to Nikkei, the newly created venture will start its operations from the beginning of next financial year in April 2010. NEC would take over the leadership with the 70.4% stake in the venture, which will be named NEC Casio Mobile Communications. In 2004 Casio and Hitachi have already merged their production units together to sustain in a highly competitive market. Other examples of market consolidation include the Kyocera and Sanyo marriage and exit of Mitsubishi in prior years. I expect the squeeze to continue and more consolidation to happen in the coming years.

Stakeholders of new venture
NEC	70.4%
Casio	20%
Hitachi	9.6%

Source: Nikkei

Top 10: Best selling mobile phone in Japan

The first week of September witnessed a big jump of iPhone 3GS from the 10th to third ranking in top 10 selling mobile phone rankings in Japan. The big jump is attributed to solving the earlier inventory problems for iPhone 3GS. Nevertheless, the undisputed leader Sharp saw two of its models swapping the top and second positions, securing its hold on Japanese market.

TOP 10
1(2) Sharp SH001	KDDI au
2(1) Sharp SH-06A	NTT DoCoMo
3(10) iPhone 3GS	Softbank
4(6) SE W64S	KDDI au
5(5) Panasonic 810P	Softbank
6(13) Sharp SH-02A	NTT DoCoMo
7(3) Sharp SH-05A	NTT DoCoMo
8(18) Sharp URBANO	KDDI au
9(7) NEC N-08A	NTT DoCoMo
10(4) iPhone 3G 8GB	Softbank

Source: IT Media Mobile