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Last updated: Wednesday, July 22, 2009

Despite advanced technology and years of dabbling in overseas markets, Japan’s handset makers have little presence beyond the country’s shores. They call the problem Galapagos syndrome. At first glance, Japanese cell phones are a gadget lover’s dream: ready for Internet and e-mail, they double as credit cards, boarding passes and even body-fat calculators. But it is hard to find anyone in Chicago or London using a Japanese phone like a Panasonic, a Sharp or an NEC. Despite years of dabbling in overseas markets, Japan’s handset makers have little presence beyond the country’s shores. “Japan is years ahead in any innovation. But it hasn’t been able to get business out of it,” said Gerhard Fasol, president of Eurotechnology Japan, an IT consulting firm based in Tokyo. The Japanese have a name for their problem: Galapagos syndrome. Japan’s cell phones are like the endemic species that Darwin encountered on the Galapagos islands — fantastically evolved and divergent from their mainland cousins — said Takeshi Natsuno, a professor at Keio University in Tokyo. This year, Mr. Natsuno, who developed a popular wireless Internet service called i-Mode, assembled some of the best minds in the field to debate how Japanese cell phones can go global. “The most amazing thing about Japan is that even the average person out there will have a superadvanced phone,” said Mr. Natsuno. “So we’re asking, can’t Japan build on that advantage?” The only Japanese handset maker with any meaningful global share is Sony Ericsson, which is a London-based joint venture of a Japanese electronics maker and a Swedish telecommunications firm. And Sony Ericsson has been hit with big losses. Its market share was just 6.3 percent in the first quarter of 2009, behind Nokia of Finland, Samsung Electronics and LG of South Korea and Motorola of the United States. Japan’s lack of global clout is all the more surprising…

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Why Japan’s Cell Phones Haven’t Gone Global

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