Only three major Japanese ISPs have opted for WiFi 7

In January this year, Rakuten Mobile announced the launch of a new Rakuten Turbo 5G unit, a Fixed 5G gateway, two years after releasing the previous one. Whereas the former one was manufactured by Sercomm, the recently unveiled device is made by Fuyu Precision. Quite surprisingly, the new model does not feature any significant upgrade compared to the former one. Alongside Rakuten Mobile, Japanese Internet Service Providers (ISPs) have been slow to offer routers compatible with the latest WiFi Standards. Only three of the major ISPs have released WiFi 7-compatible devices: SoftBank, Optage and So-net, while only the former, KDDI and Tsunagunet have released WiFi 6E-compatible devices. Although WiFi 6E-compatible devices are not expected to gain popularity in the future, WiFi 7 is poised to become mainstream, yet further in the future in Japan than in other advanced markets. This can be explained by the relative reluctance of local manufacturers to promote new devices. As a matter of fact, Japanese manufacturers do not stand at the forefront of innovation: Buffalo only has a couple routers compatible with WiFi 7, while NEC has none. This contrasts with the wide range of WiFi 7 products offered by foreign manufacturers such as TP-Link, ASUS or Netgear, with the last two performing well in the gaming segment. Since the wholesale market is still dominated by Japanese manufacturers, the lack of innovation on their side in turn keeps Japanese operators away from the most cutting-edge potentialities. Will they consider foreign procurement more to catch up with their Singaporean and Hongkongese counterparts? If so, it is unclear how Japanese manufacturers will retain market shares in the short to mid run. This research highlight is based on our data coverage of Telecom in APAC. Please contact us to get a demo and see the depth of our service.