The Japanese government is concerned about Google's (NASDAQ: GOOG) dominance in the global search business. Senior officials in the country believe that they have lost their consumer electronics advantage to companies in Korea, Taiwan, and China. And now, the Asian country may end up with no edge in the fast-growing search software business.
The battle for market share has already been won by Google on the PC platform. The Japanese government is building a partnership of several major consumer electronics companies to create search software for handsets and other devices.
According to the FT: "Tokyo hopes to use Japan's strength in developing devices, such as mobile phones and car navigation systems, to create proprietary search and information retrieval functions"
The government has matched NTT Data with Toyota InfoTechnology Center and Toyota (NYSE: TM) Mapmaster to create an interactive, personalized car navigation system. Other partnerships involve NEC, Hitachi and Sony (NYSE: SNE) Computer Science Laboratories.
To start, Japan will put about €90 million into the ventures.
Of course, Google and GPS navigation companies are already moving their software to devices other than the PC, so the Japanese may be a Little late.
Douglas A. McIntyre is a partner at 24/7 Wall St.
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