Global Biz

Nokia abandons Japanese market

(Agencies)
Updated: 2011-07-06 17:06

TOKYO -- Nokia Corp., battered by the popularity of smartphones, is abandoning the Japanese market after a brief foray with luxury cellphones costing as much as 20 million yen ($250,000).

The Finnish handset maker is closing its last store selling high-end Vertu cellphones in Ginza by the end of July. Previously, it had four such stores in Japan, according to Tomoko Morinari of Sunny Side Up, a Tokyo public relations company used by Nokia.

She declined to say when the decision to leave Japan was made or how many Vertu phones Nokia has sold in Japan.

Vertu said in a statement that it was withdrawing from the Japanese market to focus on priority businesses. It said its Tokyo office will fold by the end of this year.

Nokia phones have never been very popular in Japan, where the market is dominated by offerings from Japanese electronics makers as well as the iPhone from Apple Inc.

The Vertu handsets included one made of lacquer by a Japanese craftsman decorated as a Living National Treasure that sold for 20 million yen ($250,000), Morinari said.

Last month, Nokia warned that its second-quarter sales and margins are expected to be much lower than anticipated because of global competition in both high- and low-end markets.

Since 1998, Nokia has been the world's biggest seller of cellphones, but in the first quarter of this year Apple overtook it as the world's top handset vendor in revenue. Nokia's market share continues to fall, and at 29 percent in the first quarter is at its lowest level since the late 1990s.

Even more damaging has been Nokia's inability to meet the challenges of the smartphone market, the most lucrative sector in the handset industry.