Even though millions and millions of Symbian phones are sold in Japan every year, Nokia’s overall market share down there is less than 1%. The reason: NTT-DoCoMo’s rather obscure FOMA platform.
As the end of the FOMA platform is coming closer every day (it will go the same way UIQ went), customers must eventually be moved away from these devices and must be moved over to S60. According to Reuters, this is just what Nokia plans to do – a Japanese magazine claims that Nokia will launch an MVNO powered by NTT DoCoMo soon.
This package will remind industry veterans of Palm’s long-discontinued Palm.Net: it allows its owner to provide customers with a package consisting of a phone and the accompanying network service; all out of one hand.
I personally fear that Nokia will have issues entering this market – the Japanese cell phone market has always been completely different from the US and EU markets. For example, most Europeans love tiny phones – all FOMA devices I handled so far were big and clunky.
If Nokia wants to become big in Japan, the Japanese way of cell phone life needs to be studied (I refer to serious analysis here – eating sushi and listening to Alphaville’s “Big in Japan” does NOT count). If Nokia manages to understand how the Japanese think, they can make huge amounts of money there.
On the other hand: if the plan of attack consists of a few mini redesigns to suit Japenese CDMA networks; Nokia should prepare to double its market share to 2%…
What do you think?
Image: Wikimedia Commons/Masato OHTA
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