Tag: smartphone

  • Nintendo smartphone pivot?!

    Nintendo partners with DeNA

    Taking Nintendo intellectual property and characters to smartphones

    Nintendo was founded on September 23, 1889 by Fujasiro Yamauchi in Kyoto for the production of handmade “hanafuda” cards. Nintendo Headquarters are still located in Kyoto (you can see the Nintendo headquarters building from the Kyoto railway station).

    The Chinese characters used to write Nintendo’s original Japanese company name in Japanese mean something like “leave the responsibility to heaven or to god”.

    Nintendo has been through many pivots during its more than 100 years history, and Nintendo can afford to take its time to do things right, and it did when smartphones started disrupting industry sector after industry sector, and did not stop disrupting the games industry.

    Nintendo has a home advantage – the epicenter of the global games industry is in Japan, and not surprisingly, Japan is by far the world’s No. 1 biggest smartphone games market by cash income (other markets are bigger in terms of free downloads, but Japan is No. 1 globally in terms of cash revenues). So Japanese game companies have a big home advantage.

    The No. 1 company ranked by gross revenues of the combined total iPhone + Android app market is also a Japanese company.

    Yesterday, March 18, 2015, Nintendo announced to join forces with DeNA to jointly develop smartphone games including subscription based game services as a platform to leverage Nintendo’s iconic intellectual properties and characters.

    Do you understand the big picture of Japan’s games industries, which drive the global game market? Make sure you do – and read our report:

    Copyright 2015 Eurotechnology Japan KK All Rights Reserved

  • NEC smartphone termination, discussions with Lenovo failed

    NEC smartphone termination, discussions with Lenovo failed

    NEC smartphone – admits losing against competition from Apple and Samsung

    NEC smartphone – NEC used to be No. 1 in Japan’s “Galapagos keitai” market

    Just a few years ago, NEC was No. 1 in market share of Japanese pre-smart phone “Galake” (Galapagos-keitai, for a review of Japan’s Galapagos effect click here) super-feature phones.

    Recently NEC attempted negotiations with Lenovo, to jointly manage a new NEC-Lenovo smart phone joint-venture company, into which the NEC smartphone division would be merged.

    NEC reported that these negotiations with Lenovo had failed, and NEC now reports that it will terminate NEC smartphone production, but will continue to manufacture “Galake” feature phones. Our expectation is that NEC Galake feature phone production will also be terminated at some point in the not too distant future.

    NEC smartphone failure: What has caused NEC’s fall from No. 1 to an impending exit from the mobile phone sector? Several factors in our view:

    • NEC focused mobile phone production on Japan’s domestic market, especially NTT-docomo, since NEC is one of the NTT-Groups traditional suppliers, NEC thought that NEC will also remain among NTT-docomo’s preferred suppliers.
    • NEC failed to build viable global mobile phone business outside Japan. NEC hoped to ride NTT-docomo’s global introduction of i-Mode, supplying NEC-i-Mode phones via NTT-docomo to the world. However, since i-Mode’s global introduction failed, this strategy fell flat.
    • NTT-docomo recently decided to focus on two core handset suppliers: Samsung and SONY. Since NEC is not included in NTT-docomo’s two core handset suppliers, NEC essentially lost docomo’s sales support.
    • Unlike Google/Motorola and Apple, NEC does not control the OS-software, and therefore always depended on others to supply the OS software, which is of course an achilles’ heel type vulnerability. Still, Samsung is successful without using its own OS, although Samsung is working hard along various paths hoping to create a viable OS and ecosystem, such as Tizen.
    • Patents: NEC does not have a strong mobile phone patent position to stand up to Apple, Google or Samsung in the mobile phone patent wars.
    • Lack of scale: while NEC was a temporary No. 1 in Japan, NEC never had sufficient scale on a global level in mobile phones or smartphones.
    • Lack of focus: NEC is active in a large number of business areas, and smartphones is a small part of total activities of NEC. Thus NEC does not have the focus on smartphones which would be necessary to create global success. Probably NEC considers smartphones and feature phones a secondary business.
    • Neither has NEC sufficient financial strength to build a global smartphone business at this stage.

    Here is an overview of NEC’s financial performance over the last 15 years, the period FY1998 – FY2012

    NEC smartphone: During the 15 years FY1998-FY2012, NEC revenues declined from YEN 5000 Billion to YEN 3000 Billion, while reporting on average annual net losses of YEN 39 Billion/year.
    During the 15 years FY1998-FY2012, NEC revenues declined from YEN 5000 Billion to YEN 3000 Billion, while reporting on average annual net losses of YEN 39 Billion/year. source: https://www.eurotechnology.com/store/j_electric/

    For a detailed analysis of Japan’s electronics industry sector including NEC, see:

    Copyright (C) 2013 Eurotechnology Japan KK All Rights Reserved

  • “Help – my mobile phone does not work!” – Why Japan’s mobile phone sector is so different from Europe’s

    “Help – my mobile phone does not work!” – Why Japan’s mobile phone sector is so different from Europe’s

    Presentation at the Lunch meeting of the Finnish Chamber of Commerce in Japan (FCCJ) on March 16, 2007 at the Westin Hotel, Tokyo.

    Summary of the event and photographs here:

    https://web.archive.org/web/20160815232148/http://www.fcc.or.jp/lunch160307.html

    The presentation is not available any longer on the FCCJ website however you can download our report about Japan’s telecom sector. An abbreviated version is shown below via SlideShare. If you need the full FCCJ presentation PowerPoints e.g. for prior art or other business, please contact us.

    From the Announcement:

    In his presentation, Dr. Fasol will explain the essentials of Japan’s mobile phone market, why and how it is so different to Europe’s. He will also talk about some of the reasons why it is so difficult for European companies to succeed and uncover opportunities and the keys to success for European companies in this important market.

    Gerhard Fasol “Help – my mobile phone does not work!” – Why Japan’s mobile phone sector is so different from Europe’s, at the Finnish Chamber of Commerce in Japan
    Gerhard Fasol “Help – my mobile phone does not work!” – Why Japan’s mobile phone sector is so different from Europe’s, at the Finnish Chamber of Commerce in Japan
    Gerhard Fasol “Help – my mobile phone does not work!” – Why Japan’s mobile phone sector is so different from Europe’s, at the Finnish Chamber of Commerce in Japan
    Gerhard Fasol “Help – my mobile phone does not work!” – Why Japan’s mobile phone sector is so different from Europe’s, at the Finnish Chamber of Commerce in Japan
    Gerhard Fasol “Help – my mobile phone does not work!” – Why Japan’s mobile phone sector is so different from Europe’s, at the Finnish Chamber of Commerce in Japan
    Gerhard Fasol “Help – my mobile phone does not work!” – Why Japan’s mobile phone sector is so different from Europe’s, at the Finnish Chamber of Commerce in Japan

    More in our report about Japan’s telecom sector.

    Copyright 2007-2013 Eurotechnology Japan KK All Rights Reserved·