One of our readers asked…
Why don’t we see many smartphone brands from Japan sell their phones in the Philippines (and worldwide) unlike many brands from China who does sell their phones internationally? Isn’t Japanese quality much better than Chinese and people around the world including the Philippines would prefer to buy Japanese than Chinese? So why don’t we a lot of Japanese companies launch their phones in the international market? –AJ Montes
We do, we see Sony and its Xperia line. And yes, most Japanese smartphone brands don’t go global, because of various reasons: expected competition against foreign giants like Apple, small production scale, and due to a phenomenon they call as ‘Galápagos syndrome’.
Aside from Sony, there’s Sharp, Fujitsu, Kyocera, Panasonic and many more whose target market are domestic users in Japan. However, in contrast to global companies like Apple, Xiaomi Samsung and the likes, these Japanese brands are small in production scale.
They’d be the underdogs in the global market—perhaps the case of Sony Xperia can already tell, which accounts for less than 1% globally since 2020.
Additionally, there’s the Galápagos syndrome—a tendency of Japanese phone makers to isolate its products from global trends.
Simply put it, phones exclusive to Japan might be too complicated to survive outside its home market. This results in designs, features, and functionalities that don’t resonate with global consumers since they solely cater to the needs and preferences of tech-savvy Japanese consumers.
Looking at the stats only underscores the weak market presence of Japanese brands. According to IDC Japan, as of Q4 of 2022, Apple dominated the smartphone market share by 51.9%. This was followed by Sharp (12.9%), Samsung (8.8%), and Sony (6.6%).
I’m sure that there are more underlying reasons.
While it remains to be seen whether Japanese smartphone brands will successfully expand into other markets, their efforts to do so will be worth watching, as they could have a significant impact on the global smartphone landscape.
