Nokia, the world’s leading mobile phone maker, announced it would stop selling and marketing its handsets in Japan because the market share remained flat over too many years (hovering at around 1% vs. around 38% worldwide).

One of Nokia’s vice presidents said: “In the current global economic climate, we have concluded that the continuation of our investment in Japan-specific product variants is no longer sustainable.” They are right. Now is the right time to pull out of Japan without losing too much face.

And Nokia is very successful in China and India so they might not need the Japanese market at all (the plan to enter Nippon with their Vertu brand will not be abandoned). The company sold 38.5 million handsets in China in the first six months of this year alone.