Nokia’s global belt-tightening efforts continue with the Japanese arm of its luxury phone subsidiary Vertu the latest part of its operations to get the snip and two Vertu stores in the country will shut their doors for good at the end of the month, leaving Nokia without any presence in the land of the Rising Sun at all.Finnish firm will retain offices in Tokyo through the end of the year to manage refunds and bid farewell to the robot loving maidens of Tokyo’s commercial district……….
Nokia will finally exit the Japanese cellphone market at the end of August and the Finnish handset manufacturer had stopped supplying cell phones to Japanese carriers in 2008. Nokia will shut high-end Vertu handset stores in Tokyo’s Shibuya and Ginza districts by the end of July and the Vertu business has been struggling as the popularity of smartphones rose. Nokia‘s phone service, run on network infrastructure leased from NTT DoCoMo, will be discontinued when its contract expires at the end of August. Nokia‘s Tokyo office will stay open till the end of the year to handle fee refunds and other matters. Vertu handsets cost 600,000 yen ($7,450) to 20 million yen ($248,354) each, with some models decorated with precious metals or traditional Japanese lacquer designs. Nokia has been restructuring since its earnings deteriorated due to the rise of Apple‘s iPhone and other smartphones.
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