Shock In Store For Keitai Customers

[Mulboyne]

[Hokuto-shinken]

[color="DarkOrange"][font="Comic Sans MS"]Japanese mobile phones and monthly costs are probably the highest in the world, making them even more expensive is CrAzY.

I am not sure that is true about Softbank phones thought. If you have a contracted vodafone phone, you can`t swap it for a new Softbank phone or when your contract expirers. Also you can`t pay to end your contract with that phone and get a new Softbank phone. You have to pay for a new Softbank phone and new contract. So, most Vodafone users have moved on to au or Docomo.

Softbank boasts massive savings with their White Plan, with is 1000円 per month for use of their network. The hidden information is that you have to pay from 2万円 for a handset and above. Also the call costs are the most expensive in Japan. They try to trick you again by putting the call times for every 30 seconds 30秒 instead of the standard per minuet. I think Softbank is not a secure company and will probably change in a few months when their company flops. J phone > Vodafone > Softbank > ?

I think to Japanese people a mobile phone is much more than a means of contacting people. It is a way of life and a compulsory fashion accessory, especially if you are at school.

When I tell my friends back home most of my Japanese buddies pay over 1万円 per month sometimes 2万円 for their mobiles they look at me gone out.[/font][/color]

[Doctor Stop]

[GomiGirl]

What of Nokia and Motorola's lack of ability to compete in Japan?

There a quite a few more Nokia and Motorola handsets here in Japan now. The issue is mainly the prohibative requirements of the Japanese carriers that force all handset makers to make special handsets here that meet the requirements of this market. For the local makers this is not a problem as they are set up to do this, but for the overseas makers, they have to spend a heap of time adapting existing models for launch here in Japan.

The features of Japanese handsets are quite different and this makes it hard for a company like Nokia that ships the same handset to all other countries other than Japan and a special one for Japan only. eg doja, imode, locked basic features, special browsers etc etc.

So this explains why it is difficult for Japanese makers to compete overseas and overseas makers to compete here.

[Doctor Stop]

I was waiting for you to get involved, GG.

Nokia had quite a few handsets available here more than five years ago, then they disappeared (only to reappear again recently). They weren't bricks, but they might as well have been because they were bigger, heavier and had less features than anything available from a Japanese maker. Some of my Japanese friends who had lived overseas bought them back then actually, because they wanted the mystique of a foreign phone.

It seems to me that DoCoMo is crying because they're seeing their cushy former monopoly crumble.

[Hokuto-shinken]

[color="DarkOrange"]I think the main reason Nokia a Finnish company and Motorola an American company haven`t made it in Japan is because Japanese phones are very good already. I know au and Softbank advertise Nokia and Motorola phones in the back of their catalogues for phones to be used aboard.

I think both Nokia and Motorola phones look very cheap and are not easy to use when writing Japanese. Maybe because they are made in China, but then again a lot of Japanese phones are now.



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[FG Lurker]

I have a Samsung phone right now, and although it is not a bad phone, I will definitely be going back to Toshiba or Sharp for my next handset.

There are all sorts of weird little things that are done way better on the Japanese phones. On this Samsung for example there is one volume control for all "ring sounds", and another for the keys.

That doesn't seem so bad at first glance, but what if you want to have your phone on silent, but a quiet audible notification when a mail comes in? No-can-do. Even worse, I like to leave my phone on at night so any overseas messages are already there in the morning. However, this means I can't use the phone as an alarm clock because if I turn down the ring volume then the "alarm" is silent too!

Another area... It can't be set to automatically delete old mails when the mail capacity is full -- the only way to get rid of old mails is to delete them manually! With my previous Sharp I could set the phone to either not delete any mails (like this Samsung), or to delete the oldest ones as new ones came in... I could also "protect" certain mails so that they wouldn't get nuked even when they reached the bottom of the pile.

Yet another trouble is that all the Japanese makers have standard power and accessory connectors on their phones. You can walk in to ANY conbini and buy a charger, a car adapter, an external battery, a headset... Whatever you need is there. The non-Japanese makers have stuck to their proprietary connectors and you can't get jack shit for them from 3rd party makers.

I'm happy with other areas of the phone -- good volume, very small & thin, not too heavy, nice style, keypad is pretty good... But a lot of little things that were very useful on previous (Japanese) keitais just don't work.

[spyder]

[color="DarkOrange"][font="Comic Sans MS"]Japanese mobile phones and monthly costs are probably the highest in the world, making them even more expensive is CrAzY.
[/font][/color]

I have to disagree with this.

I remember when I was in Australia - if I wanted a top of the line phone, I needed to pay about AU$600 for the phone, and then at least AU$60 a month on top of that.

Add to that the fact that we still use SMS instead of email (~20c/SMS) compared to the 1 or 2 yen for an email in Japan.

I have found I am saving a lot more on my DoCoMo phone, even though I use it a lot more than my phone when I was in Australia.

[canman]

I can feel Charles lurking after a post like that Spyder.

[Charles]

I can feel Charles lurking after a post like that Spyder.

I have nothing to say on the subject. If he wants to spend OZ$600 just to talk to other ozzies, that's his problem.

[spyder]

OK. I am missing somthing. What's the deal?

[Hokuto-shinken]

Are you sure it is AU$600 >_<

I bet your are loving it in Japan.

[spyder]

I am sure. For a top of the range phone, it would be close to AU$1000 outright.

Of course this AU$600 is paid off over time - unless you want to buy the phone outright. The problem with "paying off" the phone is you usually get locked in to a 24 month contract.