Panasonic is a brand one typically associated with televisions or expensive batteries, but did you know that they’re the second largest mobile phone maker in Japan? Panasonic Mobile Communications is a business unit that employees roughly 2,600 people, which seems like a lot of folks to address a market that’s only half the size of the United States. According to PR Week, the Japanese company wants to stop ignoring the rest of the world and they’re in talks with several public relations firms about bringing their devices to Europe at some point in 2012. One of the devices in particular is the P-07C (video below), which is a relatively boring 4.3 inch Android smartphone with a 5 megapixel camera. If Panasonic wants Europeans to take them seriously, they should aim higher. The LUMIX Phone 101P is a perfect example of what we’re talking about. It’s a 4 inch Android smartphone with a 13.2 megapixel LUMIX camera strapped on the back; it even has a Xenon flash!
Now assuming Panasonic actually follows through and lands in Europe, they’ve got a lot of work to do in order to prove themselves. First, they need a support team, because nothing is worse than having your phone break and then having to dial tech support to reach someone who has a weak grasp on the English language. Second, they need to differentiate themselves, which shouldn’t be too hard because of their Japanese focus, but they need more than that. What’s Panasonic’s version of HTC Sense UI or Samsung TouchWIZ? Third, they need to bend over backwards to get operators to stock their devices, and that’s not going to be cheap. Panasonic may need to sacrifice some of their margins to gain some market share, and after they’ve proven themselves then they could start thinking about renegotiating terms.
We wish these guys luck, there’s no such thing as too much competition.