NEC leaves Japanese smartphone market

NEC became the latest Japanese manufacturer of smartphones to decide to get out of this market, emphasizing the inability of before the country's electronics sector proud to follow the pace of companies like Apple and Samsung Korean American.
The NEC, which was once the largest manufacturer of mobile phones in Japan, announced last Wednesday that it would no longer manufacture smartphones after seeing its domestic market share shrink to 5.3%. For 11 years, in 2011, the slice of the manufacturer was 28%.
The decision accelerates the consolidation of Japanese manufacturers of smartphones. More than a dozen industries competing in this market, are now only five, counting the output of NEC. Moreover, NEC's Smartphone was, in fact, what had remained of the smart phones of three companies: Casio, Hitachi and NEC. The three units were combined in a venture called NEC Casio Mobile Communications, in 2010, the NEC was holding a majority interest.
Facing similar pressures, other Japanese manufacturers of mobile phones also joined. In 2008, the Korean Kyocera acquired Sanyo phones arm. In 2010, the Fujitsu business absorbed the cellular production of another giant, Toshiba. Another electronics company, Mitsubishi, abandoned the manufacture of telephones.
Reasons for the fall. The NEC's decline reflects the transformation of Japanese mobile phones industry world leader the lag in little more than a decade. In 1999, the largest Japanese carrier NTT DoCoMo network, introduced one of the first mobile online services, called i-Mode, giving Japanese consumers access on the move to video games, shopping sites and other services.
The NEC was a pioneer in the development of the i-Mode phones, adding cameras and other features that seemed futuristic at the time. NEC phones were present in the first mobile data transmission services in countries such as Britain and Australia.
Dependency Property. However, analysts say that the NEC and other Japanese manufacturers of mobile phones were too closely linked to Japanese operators of networks and were too dependent on the domestic market. Therefore, failed to grasp the significance of the rise of the smartphone.
Finally, until Japan succumbed. Although the slider phones from NEC and other local manufacturers are still widely used in the country, the smartphones make up the majority of sales today. But the Japanese brands are struggling to compete with imported smartphones, especially the iPhone.
"The mobile devices market has changed a lot with the rapid spread of smartphones. The game has changed drastically, and the sale in scale has become increasingly important for the maintenance and strengthening of competitiveness, "NEC said in a statement. Despite being aware that it was necessary to change, sales of NEC's phones are on a downtrend, and the company itself just recognizing that it was impossible to change this reality.
Last year, Apple has become the market leader in Japan, with the iPhone reaching a 25.5% share of total sales of portable devices, according to MM Research Institute.
Dispute. Even Samsung, of South Korea, which has been slower to settle in Japan than in other parts of the world, has surpassed NEC last year, with a 7.2% share on the market. On smartphones, Apple is even more prevalent, with 40% of the Japanese market, according to IDC consulting.
For NEC, the last straw may have come when DoCoMo adopted a smartphone from Samsung, the Galaxy S4, in an effort to contain the loss of subscribers to rival operators KDDI and SoftBank, who worked heavily with the iPhone.