Tag Archive for Galapagos Syndrome

Why Japan’s Cellphones Haven’t Gone Global

Article: Tabuchi, H. (2009). “Why Japan’s Cellphones Haven’t Gone Global” The New York Times Company. Retrieved 20 July, 2009. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/20/technology/20cell.html?_r=1&hp As the title suggests the article talks about how the Japanese-made cell phones have not made themselves into a global market. The article refers this to as Galapagos Syndrome, where the Japanese develop a product that evolves isolated from world markets. Despite the fact that Japan has been introducing new innovations almost every year since 1999, with new features such as email capabilities, camera phone, and digital TV, many of these innovations however turned out to be too advanced for most markets overseas. The second generation network standard introduced in the 90s was rejected everywhere else in the world and has contributed to the isolation from the global markets. In addition, many analyze that the issue is in the Japanese phone makers focusing more on hardware design rather than on software, and as a result, the development of handset models becomes time-consuming and expensive. The emphasis on hardware also makes the design to be more bulky and not something that is appealing to the overseas market. The introduction of the iPhone to the Japanese market has not yet proven to…