Japan's fair trade watchdog launches probe into '1 yen' smartphones

Not Democratic. If you want to sell something for one yen, it's up to you. Not the Government.

Buy the phone independently, new or used, then choose freely your career to get rid of all that behind the scene deals and linked with contract obligations.

Not Democratic. If you want to sell something for one yen, it's up to you. Not the Government.

It's totally "right" if these carriers or sales outlets are dumping product to garner an unfair percentage of the market.

When Japanese companies dumped chips on the American market, to gain market share, no one complained when the US government stepped in to investigate. It's the same thing really.

Buy the phone independently, new or used, then choose freely your career to get rid of all that behind the scene deals and linked with contract obligations.

According to the article that would make you spend more on the phone while getting inflated prices the companies use to finance the cheap phones they sell.

Good news about the investigation.

I prefer not to give these monopolistic corps my time and money - I've not had a phone now for well over 10 years.

Much less stress too.

Of course nothing else than a joke, as the possible fines , meant to be a penalty for that dumping price selling, are very low and are then not even paid by them, but just simply put on the staff and customers to pay them back little by little (less wage raises for the employees , higher prices on customers for their data usage etc) So it affects the responsible phone distributors just only by some headlines and news about them. I guess that’s easy to stand for them and to have relaxed sleeps also with those investigations.

Welcome to 2022 Japan. The west has been selling mobile phones like this for years. It's the contract that makes these carriers money, not the phone unit.

If it is lack of transparancy about penalty clauses in contracts, then they should be investigated. The same goes for SIM locking phones to carriers.

Through no fault of their own, some people out there may not have the same level of reading comprehension, common sense, nous, or whatever as others. I do not see it as morally acceptable to exploit them, or to exploit them beyond the usual "our extra juicy 800 yen hot dog", "deep moisturizing 8,000 yen face cream", .... through small print in contracts.

Yup. Get your phone upfront online or from retailers not being the three major network providers (their sales staff are sketchy as). Then sign up with an MVNO. Waaaay cheaper, simpler and no sketchy tactics behind (for the most part).

According to the article that would make you spend more on the phone while getting inflated prices the companies use to finance the cheap phones they sell.

If you are not into the latest phone, finding some good and relatively cheap used phone is easy. Getting with a lost cost carrier. No insurance attached. After about a year, the return money from the phone purchase cost can start if the phone was cheap. And free to change carrier at anytime

The only risk is not having any insurance for damages

With the carrier plans like in the article, there are many conditions attached

About time his is done, clearly this is one way to put a lot of pressure to the competition.

20 years ago they used to sell PHS phones for 1 yen... Nothing new here.

NTT DoCoMo "sell" iPhones for 0 yen down payment, the undiscounted cost of the phone is spread over the initial contract period - 2 years, with an option to upgrade to the latest iPhone at the end of that, thus repeating the lock-in cycle...