(keitai-l) Re: Handset technology

Ren says it well, but if I may say it another way: for the
time being, the "low-hanging fruit," for Japanese
manufacturers, is in Japan; second, perhaps, are
similarly-insular markets (the U.S. and some other
Asian countries); finally, you get the telecom mosaic
of Europe.  Europeans have those month-long vacations,
typically taken in other parts of Europe; and the
Eurozone is economically more integrated than the
participating telecoms.  This is where GSM really counts.
Maybe it should be called ESM for the time being?

Also, "fruit" depends on where you are.  Market share
is the plum in Japan; actually making money is what
they might want to do elsewhere.  Japanese handset
manufacturers might prefer to sell bigger and clunkier
(read: cheaper to make) handsets in the U.S., where
the constant threat of trade action might make a
market-share emphasis strategically untenable, at
least for the moment, but where nobody prevents
them from making a profit.  In fact, the dual strategies
are complementary, not contradictory - clunkiness in
foreign markets helping, in effect, to subsidize penetration
of more advanced stuff at home.  Not unprecedented,
I'm sure.

-m
leap@gol.com

----- Original Message -----
From: Renfield Kuroda <Renfield.Kuroda@msdw.com>
To: <keitai-l@appelsiini.net>
Sent: Thursday, March 15, 2001 6:15 PM
Subject: (keitai-l) Re: Handset technology


> Japanese GSM handsets don't sell well in Europe b/c Japanese manufacturers
don't
> really care that much just yet.
> For most handset makers, GSM handsets are a tiny part of their handset
business,
> itself a small part of a larger business. Remember Japanese handset makers
are NEC,
> Fujitsu, Panasonic, etc. whose main business is not cell phones. So for a
Japanese
> maker to do enough R&D to make decent enough GSM handsets and market
enough and get
> connected to sales channels, etc. enough to have reasonable sales in
Europe, it
> wouldn't be financially tenable.
>
> However when they can leverage all their wCDMA knowledge, economies of
scale, etc.
> and sell 3G handsets for domestic Japan pretty much as-is in Europe...then
Nokia
> needs to watch out.
>
> r e n
>
>
> Petri Ojala wrote:
>
> > This can be very true for the US but doesn't explain the poor
performance of
> > Japanese GSM manufacturers in Europe.
> >
>
> --
> ascii: r e n f i e l d
> octal: \162 \145 \156 \146 \151 \145 \154 \144
> hex: \x72 \x65 \x6e \x66 \x69 \x65 \x6c  \x64
> morgan stanley dean witter japan
> e-business technologies | engineering and strategy
>
>
>
> [ Did you check the archives?   http://www.appelsiini.net/keitai-l/ ]
>
>


[ Did you check the archives?   http://www.appelsiini.net/keitai-l/ ]