[elefanten]

There might be no reason Japan should have led / captured the current iteration of those markets… but it doesn’t paint a great picture that they got NONE of them after building up into a very competitive position by the 90s, when they were global leaders of quite a few categories / product areas.

By your own account, they led gen1 smartphones, but have ended up with 0% of gen2.

They led EVs but dont have a top 5 maker now (all us, germany and china).

They have innovated some product designs more recently (eg- in social and messaging), but gave up or never tried much to fight for global share.

Startups… sure there are many but have any succeeded globally in the last 10-15 years? Is there a Spotify (Sweden), Shopify (Canada) or TikTok (China)? Off the top, the most successful global consumer launch recently from Japan was Nintendo Switch… but no startup comes to mind.

The point isn’t to beat up on Japan here, but it’s global absence is noticeable after a looming presence for decades.

[astrange]

> By your own account, they led gen1 smartphones, but have ended up with 0% of gen2.

Japan still manufactures/designs a lot of components used in phones (flash, RAM, LCD displays, cameras), just not the final product or the software.