¥4,800 Vodafone 702NKII (Nokia 6680)

03 Jan 2006

Although I've had the generic Nokia 6680 for some time now, I recently picked up the Vodafone's 702NKII flavour for Japanese testing for just ¥4,800 from my local Vodafone shop. Mobile have always been heavily subsidised in Japan but you still expect new models to sell between ¥10,000 and ¥30,000 so ¥4,800 is a bargain for a mobile that was only released here a couple of weeks ago.

The friendly Vodafone guy confirmed one of the reasons for the low 702NKII price is they have had a hard time selling Nokia mobiles to Japanese users who are used to a common UI and feature set between mobiles so here's what I think Nokia needs to do for success in Japan:

• Recognise users are more likely switching from a Japanese mobile and write a quick start user guide that emphasises the differences between completing common tasks on the typical Japanese UI and the Series 60 UI. Apple do this quite well with their Switch campaign.
• Include a QR code reader for Series 60. QR codes are ubiquitous in Japan with some not even bothering to include a human-readable URL for mobiles without QR code capabilities.
• Either update the Nokia browser or license someone else's to better support advanced mobile features like the location protocol, Flash and SVG et al.
• Bundle Acrobat Reader and Opera on the MMC and emphasis the mobile's "full browser" and document reading capabilities.
• Include an email setup wizard with settings from the more popular Japanese email services.
• Guerrilla market the mobile all over Harajuku and Shibuya.