[3GScottishUser]

From Mobile News (21/09/2006):

Japanese manufacturer NEC is pulling out of the UK and European handset markets because of production costs and competition within the market place.

NEC contacted all UK operators last week to inform them of its decision. It will honour existing supply contracts, but will not launch new products or seek new supply deals for at least 12 months.

UK MD David Payette, who joined NEC from Avaya a year ago, called the move a "hiatus", so NEC could reassess the European market to better cater to the demands of network operators.

He said: "It is a streamlining exercise and there will be a hiatus from new business directions for about 12 months while we re-examine our position in the UK and Europe. We will look at profitability, product sets and market features wanted by the network operators.

"The mobile device arena is extremely price-competitive and there has been a period of consolidation and commoditisation. The Japanese cost of production has not been ideally suited to the European market. Most of our relationships in the UK and Europe have not been sustained through the handset arena, but through infrastructure and support of new network technology. That is where we will continue to focus."

According to sources close to the situation, there will be around 31 redundancies at the company as a result. Payette said the number would be closer to 20, and that NEC would attempt to redeploy staff elsewhere within the corporation.

"About 20 roles will be impacted, but NEC is a large corporation so there should hopefully be opportunities to redeploy staff," said Payette.

NEC was the first handset manufacturer to produce 3G phones, which 3 took to launch the network in March 2003. Motorola, Nokia and LG were soon competing in the 3G space as well, however, and NEC launched its last 3G model, the NEC e338, in November 2004.

Refurbished NEC handsets still appear in the channel on pre-pay, but the 3G market is dominated by the major handset manufacturers now. NEC has turned out GSM models in the meantime, almost unnoticed.

One distributor source said: "It is probably overdue. It has no footprint at all. It initially had a semi-exclusive deal with 3, but that has run its course and NEC hasn't launched a 3G handset for a long time."

http://www.mobilenewscwp.co.uk/cgi-bin/articles.pl?section=15&id=8915&action=display

[Hands0n]

......... market features wanted by the network operators.


Aha, thats where they went wrong then .... it is not the "network operators" who buy handsets, it is us stinky old Customers - anyone in the MNO business know what one of those is? Patently not!

So, NEC cannot compete in the European space, and we should care a jot about that? Economics here in the West is simple, compete or go under. If NEC thought life here was going to be any different (i.e. instead like in Japan) then they really ought to have done their homework better.

The NEC e338 was - I thought - a stopgap to their next 3G release. Instead they sat back and cried into their saki. It was a failure as a handset, cheap and nasty like their previous stuff (only the previous was not so cheap, but was nasty).

I'll shed few crockadile tears for NECs departure from the 3G arena. There are plenty of competing devices to make NEC a total irrelevance.

[3GScottishUser]

A while ago someone said NEC stands for Never, Ever Consider.... spot on in terms of my experience of the horrific e606. What a lemon!! What about the e808 and 808Y - Y indeed?

The e338 was the last cheap and nasty horror and it took 3 about 2 years just to give them away!!

I doubt many will mourn the demise of NEC's mobile activities in Europe.

[E616Vboy123]

You slate the phones, but their cheapness made 3G accessable to the low-range pre-pay market. Anyway, my old E616V only ever froze once, and that was it refused to end a call. It was a perfectly reliable phone. The only thing that really let it down was its sheer bulk.

[miffed]

The end of an era :(

I remember with , erm , fondness (:p ) , my e808y

What a bold move that was - take a look at the launch / early range (e606 , e808 , e808y , e313 etc )

These phones (cosmetically & functionally) were a huge step backwards ( I actually have a *little* more respect for the e616v & e228 as they were, unlike there predecessors , usable ! other than the awful menu system of course )

They sold these phones as "revoloutionary" when realistically they were more "retro" than anything else

Shame really , as NEC should be one of the most capable forces on the planet - but for me , their name is tarnished forever , and I will have a little "Crap alert" flash up in my mind whenever I look at one of their products
I sincerely hope that they redeem themselves on day

I leave you with a picture of one of NEC's most cringeworthy products

[Ben]

You slate the phones, but their cheapness made 3G accessable to the low-range pre-pay market. Anyway, my old E616V only ever froze once, and that was it refused to end a call. It was a perfectly reliable phone. The only thing that really let it down was its sheer bulk.
You do have a point. In my opinion though the NEC's just wern't ready for market - just like 3G networks in general wern't ready at the time. If Three had launched with LG as a partner then their initiation into the UK market may well have been a lot smoother.

[Hands0n]

Its not so much that NEC were pioneers of the early 3G technology, rather that they failed to follow through (2 years since the e338, the last they produced here!) - anyone who remembers the original One2One phone will remember how cringeworthy that was. But time moved on and the handsets developed.

My main angst with NEC is that they simply did not follow through after the e338 which was, as E616Vboy123 rightly says, did help the bottom end of the market. But is that really where NEC wanted to reside and become [in]famous for? Because if it is then they succeeded in bucketloads.

Their [NEC's] name has becom synonymous for low-quality, bug-ridden, low battery-life and generally unreliable handsets. For sure, 3's head in the sand, secretive and downright dishonest approach to the Customer Services back-up for these early problems did nothing to help NEC's image as a handset producer. But we can only lay part of the blame at the feet of 3, NEC could have done more to help themselves.

If NEC were serious about being in the European 3G handset market they would have learned from their early mistakes, capitalised on their domestic experience and sought agreements with other MNOs. Coupled with a complete re-design of the 3G handset they could have capitalised for a short while on the e338's neat design but increased the functionality to meet the 2G challenge.

I quite like the "Buck Rodgers" look and feel of the e606, but it is completely unusable as a practical mobile telephone handset with its ridiculously short battery life and poor quality OS. It works, but like those first One2One PCN handsets, only just! And that is simply not good enough.

NEC, I feel, fell for the 3G hype - all those £ billions in licence fee probably led them into a false security, thinking they could dump simply anything onto our market and be an instant success.

A lesson to the 4G and 5G network builders is not to repeat this complacency, nor to even anticipte anything much more moneywise than can be retrieved over 2G networks.

For the masses, a phone is a phone, and we'll take some convincing otherwise, or of the need for anything more than that (unless we have other requirements). Us lot on here are fairly unrepresentative (praise be!) of the mobile phone user at large.

[getti]

The end of an era :(

I remember with , erm , fondness (:p ) , my e808y

What a bold move that was - take a look at the launch / early range (e606 , e808 , e808y , e313 etc )

These phones (cosmetically & functionally) were a huge step backwards ( I actually have a *little* more respect for the e616v & e228 as they were, unlike there predecessors , usable ! other than the awful menu system of course )

They sold these phones as "revoloutionary" when realistically they were more "retro" than anything else

Shame really , as NEC should be one of the most capable forces on the planet - but for me , their name is tarnished forever , and I will have a little "Crap alert" flash up in my mind whenever I look at one of their products
I sincerely hope that they redeem themselves on day

I leave you with a picture of one of NEC's most cringeworthy products


LOL!!! i own 2 of them phones