Japanese Phone Firm Sees Export Market in Older Users

Rather than competing with dominant brands like Samsung and Apple in the mainstream smartphone market, Fujitsu is aiming at a niche — older consumers, who, the company says, are not always served adequately by products like Apple’s iPhone or the Samsung Galaxy series.

In partnership with Orange, formerly France Télécom, Fujitsu has started selling a smartphone in France that uses a technology called Raku-Raku, or “easy easy.”

The Raku-Raku handset has a touch screen and provides on-the-go Internet access, but it has larger buttons and other features aimed at older people who sometimes struggle with the complexity of conventional smartphones.

“We believe the smartphone provides benefits to these customers,” said Toru Mizumoto, the director of the mobile product division at Fujitsu.

In partnership with NTT DoCoMo, the leading mobile network operator in Japan, Fujitsu has sold 20 million Raku-Raku phones in Japan since it introduced them in 2001. Ten million of them remain in active use more than a decade later. While most of these phones are old-fashioned feature phones, Fujitsu and DoCoMo introduced the first Raku-Raku smartphone in Japan last year.

Japanese manufacturers tend to focus on the domestic market, introducing features that are considered innovative here but considered quirky and less appealing elsewhere.

While aging consumers may be a niche market, they present a growing opportunity in most industrialized countries. In Japan, 39 percent of the population will be 65 or older in 2050, up from 23 percent in 2010, according to the Statistics Bureau of Japan. In France, the 65-and-older cohort will grow to 25 percent in 2050 from 17 percent in 2010, data from the United Nations show.

“If you’re a smaller vendor and maybe haven’t had much of a presence in Europe, it makes sense to look at these kinds of niches,” said André Malm, an analyst at Berg Insight, a research firm in Gothenberg, Sweden. “It’s an underserved market.”

The 65-and-up population may be growing, but 65-year-olds are becoming younger, too — at least in terms of their affinity for technology. Those who will retire in 2020 or 2030 are active on Facebook or Twitter now.

“We see that there is a big, big part of the senior population that is willing to go for a smartphone,” said Augustin Becquet, the head of Orange’s device portfolio.

While the elders of tomorrow may be increasingly comfortable with technology, their physical dexterity may deteriorate with age, as it has with past generations. That is where the Raku-Raku smartphone, called the Fujitsu Stylistic S01, comes in.

At first glance, the S01 looks like a fairly ordinary smartphone. The features aimed at pleasing old people could just as easily be annoying. The touch-screen “buttons” on the phone’s calling function, for example, require a firmer push than those on ordinary smartphones. Only after a slight vibration do they register the chosen digit. That way, the phone avoids misdialing.

Another Fujitsu technology appears to slow down the speech of the person on the receiving end of a Raku-Raku call by removing the gaps between words and allotting more time to the actual sounds. The screen is brighter than those on ordinary smartphones, making it easier to read under direct sunlight.

There are also safety features, like a button on the phone that sends a text message to a friend or family member with the GPS coordinates of the phone’s owner in case of emergency. In its shops, Orange is providing special training on how to use the phones.

“The younger generation likes the stuff with the latest technology, but every smartphone vendor is going to have to adapt to an aging population,” Mr. Becquet said.

While Fujitsu and DoCoMo were pioneers in the development of phones for older people, they are not the only players in the field. Two European companies, Emporia Telecom in Austria and Doro in Sweden, have also been actively pursuing older users.

Doro introduced its first phone aimed at that market in 2008 and has sold four million of them since then. In the Nordic countries, 15 percent of the 65-and-older population uses Doro phones, said Jérôme Arnaud, the chief executive of the company.

While most of the Doro phones in use are old-fashioned handsets, the company introduced a basic smartphone last December and plans to roll out a more sophisticated model this autumn, Mr. Arnaud said.

The phone will use a simplified version of the Android mobile operating system, and several dozen applications have been customized for it, he added. These include a video e-mail function that lets older people skip the typing.

As for Orange and Fujitsu, the companies say they view the partnership in France as a pilot project; if the Stylistic phone catches on, they say, it will also be offered in other European markets in which Orange operates, like Britain.

“For Japanese vendors, it has been challenging to go abroad,” said Michito Kimura, an analyst at the research firm IDC, “but this technology does meet a demand.”

Communications Satellites, Banned as ‘Weapons,’ Now Legal for Export

Although the United States founded the industry, manufacturers were forced to pull back from international markets after a 1999 law categorized the satellites as weapons and restricted their export. At the time, Congress was fearful that selling satellites abroad could allow technology secrets to fall into the wrong hands.

The defense bill that President Obama signed will undo that step and let American companies sell communications satellites as civilian technology rather than as deadly arms. Among the beneficiaries will be companies like Boeing, Hughes and Space Systems/Loral.

“This is a tremendous assist for an industry that is inherently international,” said Patricia A. Cooper, president of the Satellite Industry Association, a business group in Washington. “It will ensure our place at the forefront of space.”

As a practical matter, communications satellites made their debut in 1964 and quickly became stars of the space age. The first craft, orbiting at 22,300 miles, relayed signals to the United States from Japan that let American television viewers watch live coverage of the 1964 Olympic Games in Tokyo.

But the industry stumbled 13 years ago after Republicans in Congress pressed for a law that restricted communications satellite exports. The lawmakers praised it as a security precaution that would prevent China and other perceived foes from stealing technology secrets. Detractors saw it as a cynical ploy meant to discredit the Clinton administration and its policy of Chinese engagement.

That law put communications satellites on Washington’s list of export-controlled munitions: tools of war like tanks, bombs, missiles and equipment for making nuclear arms. Foreign companies took the opportunity to increase their satellite sales.

The new law gives Mr. Obama the authority to return communications satellites to their previous status as civilian technology. It retains provisions that restrict the export of satellites to nations like China and North Korea, and to sponsors of state terrorism like Iran.

Senator Michael Bennet, Democrat of Colorado, who introduced a bill to change the policy on satellite exports and whose state is a space industry hub, said the measure offered satellite manufacturers a crucial lift.

“Companies across the country have been operating at a disadvantage due to these policies,” he said in a statement. “These reforms will give our businesses a chance to compete globally while still protecting our national security interests.”

The strict export controls arose from a political fight over satellite launchings by China, which in the 1980s began offering cheap rides into orbit on low-cost rockets. Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush, both Republicans, approved transfers of American spacecraft to Chinese rockets, as did President Bill Clinton, a Democrat.

Starting in early 1998, a series of upsets brought the expanding trade to a halt. Two American satellite makers involved in the Chinese launchings, Hughes and Loral, were accused of giving China advice about making not only commercial rockets, but also military missiles.

Republicans, who controlled Congress at the time, argued that satellite exports could lead to a hemorrhage of secret materials and information, and said that China might already have stolen encryption secrets.

After the strict export rules took effect in 1999, the legal complications involved in selling communications satellites and components abroad contributed to a sharp decline in the American share of the market, from a dominating position to about 50 percent today.

During the 2008 presidential campaign, Mr. Obama said the rules had “unduly hampered the competitiveness of the domestic aerospace industry” and vowed to push for change.

Representative Howard L. Berman, Democrat of California, who for a decade helped lead the movement for change, said its culmination as law would help restore the nation’s competitiveness in the global satellite market.

“Treating commercial satellites and components as if they were lethal weapons, regardless of whether they’re going to friend or foe, has gravely harmed U.S. space manufacturers,” he said.

Mr. Berman added that the benefits extended beyond the manufacturers. The national security establishment relies on the companies and their technological skills to fulfill the government’s satellite needs and to develop spacecraft involved in a wide range of military missions.

“If they can’t compete in the international marketplace,” he said of the companies, “they can’t innovate and cannot survive.”