A closer look at Japan's latest handsets

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Bert @ Dec 1st 2008 3:12PM

The Japanese value R&D to a fault, which is why Sony Ericsson uses its CDMA division in Japan as a test bed for future designs and feature sets. It would be impossible for a Japanese cellphone to sell here without a carrier subsidy in the 70-95% range simply due to the cost of engineering. As an example the retail cost of a W44S before contract was ~$750.

It's also important to emphasize that the Japanese manufacturers intentionally sabotage a particular feature for each carrier in order to maintain increasingly shorter and more expensive production cycles that only reinforce the constant R&D spending cycle that leads to a false appearance of innovation.

I'll leave the DRM discussion for another time as that is a discussion unto itself.

Neutral

Jamar @ Dec 3rd 2008 10:45AM

"It's also important to emphasize that the Japanese manufacturers intentionally sabotage a particular feature for each carrier in order to maintain increasingly shorter and more expensive production cycles that only reinforce the constant R&D spending cycle that leads to a false appearance of innovation."

Interesting that you mentioned SE, because apparently this tactic backfired on them and now they have no dedicated R&D for Japan anymore. From now on, all SE's Japanese models should be the same as their world-market models. Hope this means better stuff for us elsewhere rather than a prelude to a Nokia-style pullout from Japan.

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