"This is the end of the cheap smartphone industry" The destructive power of Rakuten Plan to chase after the three major companies [2021 1st half BEST5] It is time for one industry to disappear

It was said that "you have to make a cheap smartphone or you will lose" ...

There are two types of death sentences for the company. One is bankruptcy. This is a case where the management is stuck and the support of the bank cannot be obtained, and the management has to hold his head and decide the bankruptcy. And the other case is a pattern in which the rules of the world change and you realize that "Oh, we can't survive."

Photo = Jiji Press Photo Hiroshi Mikitani, Chairman and President of Rakuten, who attended Rakuten Mobile's new plan presentation. The amount of data used on mobile phones is free up to 1 gigabyte, and even if it is 20 gigabytes, it will be 1980 yen (excluding tax), which is about 1000 yen lower than the new plan started by three major companies such as NTT DoCoMo in March (Park Tower, Minato-ku, Tokyo). View all images (4)

It may be a cheap smartphone service provider that is in the latter state now. The market for independent cheap smartphone services such as "OCN Mobile ONE," "mineo," "BIGLOBE Mobile," "IIJmio," "Aeon Mobile," and "BIC SIM" has grown rapidly over the past five years.

Until a while ago, the monthly communication charges for smartphones of the three major mobile phone companies were about 7,000 to 8,000 yen, but for cheap smartphones, the monthly charge was 3,000 to 4,000 yen. For light users who don't use much data, it's about 2000 yen. Therefore, I had the image that it would be a loss if I didn't make a cheap smartphone.

There are quite a few people who have more than one, so I can't tell the actual situation just by looking at the number of contracts, but according to a survey of the world, about 75% of people have smartphone contracts with three major companies and use them mainly. , The power of cheap smartphones has expanded to the point where about 25% of people mainly use cheap smartphones.

For MVNOs, price cuts are directly linked to earnings pressure

What emerged there was a move to reduce smartphone charges, which was the main policy of the Kan administration that was born last fall. NTT DoCoMo announced a new plan "ahamo" with 20GB and a monthly fee of 2980 yen, and Softbank and KDDI hurriedly followed suit. These new plans will be available from this March.

If that happens, you will not be able to survive the previous cheap plans such as 7GB and 3000 yen per month. It seems that there are at least 50 cheap smartphone operators with more than 30,000 contracts. Price reduction plans have been announced one after another by those cheap smartphone companies, but it should be a plan that is marginal in terms of profit and loss. This is because most of them are in the business form of MVNO, which provides services by paying the usage fee of the line borrowed from a major company, so the price reduction directly leads to the pressure on profits.

With the industry inevitably undergoing a major reorganization, what will happen to the cheap smartphone industry in the future? I would like to summarize the possibilities.

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