Europe-Japan

Tag: nokia

  • MixRadio: from Nokia to Microsoft to LINE

    MixRadio: from Nokia to Microsoft to LINE

    Messaging giant LINE continuous globalization

    MixRadio will complement LINE’s local Japanese LINE Music service

    by Gerhard Fasol

    In December 2014, LINE and Microsoft announced that LINE will acquire the streaming music service MixRadio from Microsoft.

    LINE already operates a Japan-only streaming music service “LINE Music”. Since music licensing is largely country or region specific, with this acquisition, LINE can develop global streaming music services building on existing licenses.

    MixRadio

    The service was developed as “NOKIA comes with Music” by NOKIA in 2007, a streaming music service which was built into certain NOKIA phones. Over the years, NOKIA also used the product names Nokia Music, Nokia Music Store and OVI Music Store for this streaming music service.

    With the acquisition of NOKIA’s handset unit by Microsoft, the company became part of Microsoft, and Microsoft changed the name to “MixRadio”.

    The company operates currently in 31 countries, and has a catalogue of about 36 million songs using the MP3 file format without Digital Rights Management (DRM) protection.

    Competitors are Spotify and others.

    Headquarters are in Bristol, UK, current CEO is Jyrki Rosenberg.

    LINE Corporation

    LINE Corporation is a Japanese/Korean messaging group, which is also the No. 1 top grossing global iOS and Android app provider.

    For detailed discussion, see Japan game market report (398 pages, pdf-file):

    Japan’s game makers and markets (32nd edition) – disruption by smartphone games

    Copyright 2015 Eurotechnology Japan KK All Rights Reserved

  • Nokia to buy Panasonic’s mobile phone base station division

    Nokia to buy Panasonic’s mobile phone base station division

    Nokia to acquire Panasonic System Networks

    by Gerhard Fasol

    Nokia to expand market share in Japan, Panasonic to focus on core business

    Panasonic, after years of weak financial performance, is focusing on core business. Nikkei reports that Panasonic is planning to sell the base station division, Panasonic System Networks, to Nokia.

    Nokia expands No. 1 position in Japan

    Our analysis of Japan’s mobile phone base station market shows, that Nokia became No. 1 in Japan’s base station market with the acquisition of Motorola’s base station division. Acquisition of Panasonic System Networks will expand Nokia’s NSN to expand market leadership in Japan’s mobile phone base station market.

    Panasonic System Networks

    Panasonic System Network’s market share is estimated at around 10% of Japan’s mobile phone base station market, while international sales are essentially non-existent. Thus Panasonic System Network’s global market share is negligible, giving Panasonic little possibility for the scale necessary to operate a stable profitable longterm base station business.

    Japan’s mobile phone handset makers and base station makers have for many years focused on serving Japan’s internal market only, and in particular have focused on Japan’s No. 1 mobile phone operators NTT Docomo. This gave Japan’s mobile phone base station makers a temporary home advantage, however with the value shift from hardware to software, they lack scale, and are subsequently uncompetitive globally. More about Japan’s Galapagos effect here.

    The context: EU investments in Japan

    While Japanese investments in Europe are booming, recently European investments in Japan have been stagnating after Vodafone’s withdrawal from Japan, and there are very few new European investments in Japan. Could it be that Nokia’s investment in Japan starts a new trend of renewed European investments in Japan?

    Japan telecommunications industry market report

    Japan telecommunications industry (66th edition) – Market analysis & tutorial

    Copyright (c) 2014 Eurotechnology Japan KK All Rights Reserved

  • NOKIA quits Japan – for now…

    NOKIA’s Japan subsidiary was founded on April 3, 1989 – almost 20 years ago. On November 27, 2008 NOKIA announced to terminate selling mobile phones to Japan’s mobile operators, effectively withdrawing from Japan (except for purchasing, R&D and VERTU).

    NOKIA’s sales figures in Japan were a well kept secret until last week when several Japanese newspapers wrote that NOKIA sold 200,000 phones during FY 2007: thus NOKIA’s market share was 0.39% – after 20 years of market entry efforts.

    Considering the disastrous collapse of mobile phone handset sales in Japan, NOKIA’s move to quit sales in Japan actually makes a lot of sense. Nothing prevents NOKIA from re-entering Japan again in the future.

    Copyright·©2013 ·Eurotechnology Japan KK·All Rights Reserved·

  • Nokia & Sony Ericsson Results Likely to Disappoint (CNBC TV interview)

    More in our J-ELECTRIC report: http://www.eurotechnology.com/store/j_electric/

    Copyright·©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

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

    Find the summary and photos of the meeting here

    Download the presentation here

    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.

    More in our report about Japan’s telecom sector.

    Copyright·©2013 ·Eurotechnology Japan KK·All Rights Reserved·

  • SANYO – NOKIA CDMA2000 JV (Interview for CNBC)

    Was interviewed today about the announced JV between SANYO and Nokia for CDMA2000 phone handsets (I added some corrections here):

    [Q1] How will SANYO benefit from this, since they are the ones who have the technology, what do they hope to gain from working with Nokia? Or is this merely a way to reduce costs for the company, since it’s struggling to remain profitable?

    It is clear to me that NOKIA will benefit, since NOKIA needs 3G know-how from Japan because all markets where NOKIA is dominating are behind compared to Japan in 3G development, and also NOKIA needs a lot of other advanced technology from SANYO.

    Of course who benefits depends both on the contract conditions and the relative strengths of the parties.

    It’s clear that financially NOKIA is the much stronger of the two. NOKIA is financially very strong, while SANYO is in a very weak position, so it’s a very clever move for NOKIA.

    [Q2] Is it already too late for Nokia to make such a move in the CDMA 2000 market, with strong players like Samsung, LG and Motorola already entrenched in the market?

    I don’t think it’s too late – both Motorola and NOKIA demonstrated rebounds recently with new design initiatives such as Motorola’s RAZR and NOKIA did a successsful turn-round by introducing clam-shell phones a trend which NOKIA had missed by not being linked sufficiently into Japan before.

    To succeed you need to make spectactular phones which match consumer needs, and you need the financial and manufacturing power as well as the brand. The combination of SANYO‘s technology with NOKIA’s financial strength and brand, as well as NOKIA’s efficient supply chain are a good basis.

    [Q3] When would you expect to see the benefits of such a move to emerge?

    I think one should not underestimate the cultural risks. NOKIA and SANYO have extremely different corporate cultures, and we have seen many cases where corporate cultures lead to great difficulties.

    I think the key will be to manage the difference in corporate cultures of two very proud companies. Locating the JV in the USA might help.

    SONY-Ericsson has demonstrated that such a JV can be successful. In the case of SONY-Ericsson it has taken several years for the JV to succeed. If one takes SONY-Ericsson as a measure, then it might take a couple of years (3-4 years) for this JV to succeed. If it’s faster than that it will be a positive surprise.

    Copyright·©2013 ·Eurotechnology Japan KK·All Rights Reserved·