Vodafone to leave Japan

OK, what's the real story here? Any idea? I've had 3 phones in the last 3 years. We wanted prepaid and Vodafone is the only one that does that now because NTT says it encourages crime i.e. "We can't make enough money on them". But if you go to Seiden, Midori, or any major electrical chain near us, they'll tell you "Vodafone's not good and it's expensive compared to (NTT) or (KDDI)". It happened to us twice. Even a good friend kept telling us KDDI was cheaper until his student also agreed with me that, actually, no he'd been duped and Vodafone is much cheaper. It is if you actually do the simplest of comparative shopping.
So,
-- Vodafone definitely didn't help themselves by being cheaper (again)!
-- There seems to have been a similar reaction (I admit, probably unplanned or coordinated, just natural) by retailers to NOT sell Vodafone -- so lower margins to distributors?
-- They certainly DON'T have the handset gimmicks that KDDI & NTT roll out on a weekly basis
-- At least in Kobe, they thought it was a good idea to staff their own stores with foreigners. Especially in Kobe this was probably a very stupid thing to do.
-- I needed a top-up card just yesterday. I was heading to the nearest 7-11, but happened to pass a Vodafone shop, so in I went. But, just as in Spain, you take a number and wait 10-15 minutes to get served. Similar at NTT, I guess, but that just means that Vodafone shops should have ONLY sold handsets and not provided the service.
In any case, I expect Softbank will pretty quickly discontinue the prepaid service forcing a monthly charge. I'll do some investigation to compare prices again. Really burns me to have to sign with NTT or KDDI though because they're both such MAJOR rip-off artists. KDD for years had a monopoly on all international calls and gouged and gouged for it - but at the same time they ran famous advertising campaigns proclaiming they were "Ichiban Yasui" the cheapest available. Well of course, they were the ONLY company available. Today they have colourful, techie handsets, but the pricing is high, their music download service is designed so that you lose what you buy over time because of DRM and, did I mention, they aren't cheap. NTT's idea of marketing and competition is still limited to giving 1 in a million customers a present such as a teddy bear or a coffee mug. They have such a lock on the market that they can basically do whatever they want, and do.
Oh yeah, and in hindsight, changing to the Vodafone name from J-Phone was probably a very bad idea.
So was Vodafone stupid and poorly informed about Japan? Almost certainly yes.
Was it deliberately pushed out of the market by distributors in precisely the same way that Palm was, a combination of having products that didn't update weekly as is the case with Japanese models and the problem that local distributors refuse to sell overseas products? Very probably yes. (This is a fate that Apple avoided by growing so large so quickly with its iPod, but you can guarantee that the next big assault on the iPod will be through huge margins to the distributor to encourage sellers to push certain products.)
Will consumers lose out by Vodafone's withdrawal? Well, the fact that Softbank is taking over (probably) there's a glimmer of hope as Softbank has a good record both of great customer service, but also for shaking up the Japanese establishment. But I guarantee that our fantastic prepaid phones will be discontinued and we'll be left with paying a minimum of ¥4,000 a month just for the privilege of owning a phone, and a lot more of using it.

Tags: Japan; Vodafone