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Smile on the face of Nokia as Japan mobiles market crashes

 The market for mobile phones in Japan was the one Nokia planners penned for collapse. It looks like they got that right: October shipments in the land of the Rising Sun for October reached the "lowest monthly total on record," according to reporter Sachi Izumi.

Reports in Forbes say that the drop was 58% compared with October last year.

Nokia's decision to focus on the American market, where it comes fifth in rankings, and where a 10% increase in sales would transform its global sales figures, was not based on quite this expectation, however. NewsWireless sources suggest the pullout was based on the perception that the Japanese market was controlled by non-commercial forces.

"They probably took the view that unless they could buy NTT Docomo business, they'd never amount to anything in that country," said our Nokia insider. "But there's no point in buying Japanese market share, even if they could; the margins aren't encouraging anyway.

Globally, phone makers outside North America are facing a dismal 2009, with a saturated market moving to longer-term contracts in Europe, and Asian economic downturn looking far worse than expected by pessimists. But the US and Canadian markets are strangely immature, for historical reasons.