Not concentrating on localization and expanding their TAM.
Japanese firms had much less money to play around with after the Asian financial crisis in the 1990s, and localization costs a LOT of money.
Japan is already a large (125M+ pop, $4T GDP) market with an insular population that only really speaks Japanese.
This meant Japanese companies line Sony, Toshiba, etc can survive by just selling to Japanese customers without having to worry about spending money on innovating or building competitive products, as non-Japanese companies didn't care as much about Japanese localization and Japanese consumers couldn't really afford dollar denominated products on a Japanese salary.
Within 15 years, Japan got overshadowed by Korea, which to Japanese before rhe 2010s was what Americans think of Mexico. Korea has a much smaller population and historically had a much poorer population than Japan (they only caught up in median household incomes recently-ish - last 5 years), and as such Korean companies were more international facing and open to adopting best practices from abroad and competing in the developing world (it was Korean companies like Samsung that paved the path for Apple to begin manufacturing in China, India, and Vietnam)
Companies like Sony, Toyota, and Kirin got overshadowed by Samsung (Korea), Hyundai (Korea), and Lotte (Korea), and Korean conglomerates like Lotte began buying up Japanese prestige brands, and even Japanese-Koreans became like Mayoshi Son major titans of industry
Not necessarily, on the tech side, but localized support can get pretty hairy.
Also, it depends on what your product is. Many different nations have many different laws, and localization is more than just changing the words in your screens.
Only made them a top 5 economy with a tiny population, few natural resources and little to no land.
Sounds like being a U.S. vassal state is an excellent place to be.
Which is actually truer than one may think. Most U.S. “vassal states” do excellently, including much of Europe, Israel, Saudi Arabia, etc.
The primary reason behind that is they are not vassal states. The U.S. doesn’t have vassal states (outside of maybe Puerto Rico) and yes it has expectations of its allies but those are surprisingly low compared to even the shitties states to be vassals of. Compare what the U.S. expects of Saudi Arabia or Japan (what impositions does it place?) to what Russia expects of its vassal states (many of which it has literally taken over by force), or China (look at what China is doing to BRI countries like Pakistan and Sri Lanka…hollowing their economy out and getting paid for the privilege…) or even India (which has gone on an all out economic war against Mauritius because a couple of clowns in their government said something they didn’t like).
Heck, even to the extent China or India are succeeding economically it’s because of the U.S. economic ties. China is almost entirely built by American investment over the past few decades. And even the subject of this specific story, Zoho, part of the Indian IT ecosystem, is entirely a result of US economic partnership starting in the 90s.
It’s not an exaggeration to say that American “vassal statehood” is literally the only path to economic success and prosperity since WW2.
That's not the mainstream economic consensus, nor what the Japanese economists themselves think.
One thing often forgotten is that the trade surplus of Germany and Japan was so high that it was literally squeezing out the growth of other export developing countries. That kind of artificially overleveraged bubble is unsustainable for any nation, and the Japanese failed to make the neccesary reforms till it burst. Germany managed to come out fine, while setting the stage for the rest of Asian tigers to rise.
First of all, Maldives not Mauritius. Their current president won on a campaign of India out and then a minister said Indians smell and something about cowdung. I guess we Indians need to develop thick skins and still go to Maldives for leisure travel because self respect is only reserved for westerners.
