Mobile phone shipments drop 58% in Japan
You don’t have to look far to find signs of the poor economic climate. The global climate is as bad as it’s been in a very long time and it seems each day we hear another indication that points to how bad it really is. Forbes has reported that mobile phone sales are down 58% in Japan, a staggering decrease in phone shipments. Japan is typically one of the hottest markets globally and this decrease is staggering. This huge drop in phone shipments makes the recent Nokia decision to pull out of Japan understandable.
We often complain in the US about the business model we have to live with where carriers subsidize the phones in exchange for long contracts. We might want to think twice about that according to Forbes based on what experts blame for the Japanese phone slump:
The figures underscore the deepening slump in Japan’s mobile phonemarket following the industry-wide introduction of a new business modelunder which carriers charge more for handsets in return for lowercalling fees.
Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
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It’s the usual thing. “Be careful what you wish for, you may get it.”
We complain about the carrier-subsidized model in the same way that we complained about airline food. Of course, that was back when we had airline food.
Go to a college campus and look at all the students with Blackberries. Blackberries in Apple.edu? Why yes, because the Blackberries cost $49.95 with a 2-year contract.
It may also reflect that there aren’t any new must have features this year as well in the Japanese. Last year 1seg TV tuners were the must have feature and frankly, judging by advertisements, the current features being pushed are iPhone like touch screen operation (zooming of photographs, etc.) for a few features and photoediting on the phone. I don’t know whether young adults are going to be motivated to change phones for that, especially since the phones cost more. Also, most of the cellphone operators are selling phones for a little down and monthly payments so the monthly cost has changed that much. Of course being economical middle aged geek, I only change phones when there’s either some feature that I really want or the rechargeable battery goes bad about the time that a fairly desirable 9 month old model becomes heavily discounted (generally coinciding with the end of the contract period for my old phone).