For Samsung Electronics Co Ltd, the 2020 Tokyo Olympics were going to be its springboard to attain a long-held goal - making significant inroads into Japan's lucrative smartphone market where Apple Inc dominates.
"Samsung was keen to use the Olympics opportunity to get it right in Japan. In that sense, it's a bad situation," a person familiar with Samsung's operations told Reuters, noting that Samsung and other sponsors would have to adjust plans. Samsung may be the world's No. 1 smartphone maker by volume but it has just a fraction of the Japanese market.
"I believe they did so due to the growing number of Japanese consumers who take political factors into account in their purchase considerations," said Shengtao Jin, a research analyst at Canalys.In March last year, it opened the world's biggest Galaxy store in Harajuku, Tokyo's popular shopping district for youth fashion and pop culture. Boasting eight floors, the glitzy building has an exterior decorated with more than 1,000 smartphones.
That phone is expected to arrive by end-2020, though some media reports have said it may be delayed by the pandemic.