Japanese Cell Phone Sales Set to Surge in 2006
Market research firm Gartner Japan has good news and bad news for cell phone manufacturers and telecos. The company predicts Japanese handsets sales could reach 49 million units in 2006 as mobile number portability finally makes it debut and consumers trade up to faster, smarter handsets on their carrier of choice. That’s good news since sales for 2005 are looking rather flat especially compared to those halcyon days of 2003 when the debut of the camera phone helped drive sales to over 48 million units. Bad news is that Gartner’s research [.pdf in Japanese] indicates sales will fall again sometime in 2007 once consumers have replaced their current handsets.
Of course it doesn’t take costly research to know telecos here have a lot to worry about. With the domestic cell phone market fast reaching saturation point DoCoMo, KDDI and Vodafone will have to depend not only on handset replacement but rolling out comprehensive mobile consumer, retail, and data-related services — both in-house and through partners — to retain customers and keep income flowing in the right direction.
Japan’s lost souls and the musically minded are targets for two new W-CDMA 3G handsets from Vodafone Japan, the 903T and 803T, both by Toshiba. Scheduled for an October release, the 903T finally puts Vodafone on the real-time mobile GPS navigation map (rivals DoCoMo and KDDI have had network GPS phones for some time). Vodafone’s “Live Navi” navigation portal goes the competition one better with the addition of GPS global roaming options in the UK, Hong Kong, Holland, Spain and Germany — with more countries to follow. Of course, international roaming and Vodafone live! communication charges will apply, which might make it cheaper just to buy a guidebook.