Why did a company that makes gem-studded phones that cost more than $100,000 decide to sell mobile service, too, just as the world dropped into the worst economic downturn in decades?
And why would that company pick, of all places, Japan, a country that had been a graveyard for the ambitious plans of many foreign cellular operators and manufacturers, including Vodafone, Motorola, Samsung and LG?
That graveyard also has a headstone for Nokia, which makes more than one of every three mobile phones sold around the world last year but just two months ago packed up on selling its phones in Japan.
Yet a Nokia unit, Vertu, which makes its ultra-high-end phones by hand in Britain, has identified a slice of the Japanese market that it thinks is ready to spend more on phones and accompanying services than many people make in a year.
Vertu phone's foray into Japan will be the first attempt anywhere in the world by Nokia to play the role of mobile phone operator. It will rent space on the network of NTT DoCoMo of Japan, creating what is known as a mobile virtual network operator. It is set to start service this month.
The Vertu system will include a "concierge service," accessed from a dedicated button on the phone, to help clients satisfy their whims. Subscribers who pay a yearly fee -- the amount of which Vertu declined to disclose -- can call the concierge for information on anything from how to get into the trendiest club to where to make a rush order of Champagne and caviar. The service will not actually deliver the Champagne, though.
"This is definitely an odd time to start this, but Vertu is a different company than Nokia and its products are more a luxury item than a mobile phone," said David McQueen, a principal analyst in London for Informa Telecoms & Media. "They are thinking they can entice a certain part of the Japanese market by bundling service with the phone, but it won't be easy. It's quite risky for Vertu to try this."
Mayumi Fujitani, the marketing manager in Tokyo for Vertu, said the new service had been under development for more than two years.
The plans for the exclusive service "are a specific development for the Japan market and should be seen in the context of our continuous focus on customer services," she said.
Nokia plans to open a flagship store in Tokyo this month to sell the phones and memberships. Fujitani declined to disclose Nokia's sales targets for the venture.
Nokia has been pushing aggressively into services in an effort to avoid past mistakes. At the beginning of this decade it learned that it could take a long time to make up for a missed opportunity in the hyper-competitive mobile phone market, when it missed the move to clamshell cellphones.
The line between manufacturers and service providers has been blurring for years in the mobile phone industry as companies on both sides of the divide encroach on what was once the exclusive territory of the other. Network operators now often dictate the price of the phones because they can sell high volumes in their stores. At the same time, many manufacturers are selling services like music downloads and GPS-powered location-based services.
"By offering airtime, Vertu phones can offer its consumers a one-stop-shop service and they can leave the retail concession with the device ready to use," said Ben Wood, the director of research at British consultancy CCS Insight. He said Nokia could draw encouragement from the fact that during Japan's "lost decade" of the 1990s, when the economy stagnated, the rich continued to spend on luxury goods.
"These extremely wealthy individuals have ensured that Japan is one of the holy grails for luxury goods manufacturers," he said.
But will the wealthy want their own mobile network? Other virtual operations aimed at specific consumer niches, from sports fans to music lovers, have struggled.
Those that have thrived "tend to be cheap, cheerful and low cost," McQueen, of Informa Telecoms & Media, said. "But that won't be the case here."
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