No. 123: Shrinking Japanese mobile phone market (August 5, 2010)

Japanese mobile phone makers had only 3.5% share in the world market despite the striking performance accompanied by highly sophisticated software programs. The world market in 2009 was about 1,155 million units, and Nokia was the runaway leader with 37.4% share. Two Korean makers, Samsung and LG Electronics, are second and third largest players, and they have a combined share of about 30%. Japanese domestic shipments accounted for 20% of the world shipments in the late 1990s, but it is a thing of the past. Actually, the Japanese domestic market is shrinking. Domestic shipments decreased 30% from the previous year to about 36 million units in 2008 and again decreased to about 31.5 million units in 2009. Realizing how serious the situation is, Japanese makers are exerting more energy to expand the foreign markets. Lots of difficult problems seem to lie before them because it is not an easy job to persuade excellent developers taking pride in developing stunning products to design less sophisticated and lower priced products.