ガラケー

garakei An ordinary cellphone, without smart features, specifically designed for the Japanese market

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This also came up in work today, and I initially assumed two things. It was an abbreviation for a longer term (that was correct), and that the longer term was ガラガラ携帯 garagara keitai, a cell phone devoid of additional features (that was not correct). It is an abbreviation for ガラパゴス携帯 garapagosu keitai, an ordinary (non-smart) cell-phone designed specifically for the Japanese market. But why is the reference to the Galapagos Islands in there? Because there is a tendency for Japanese manufacturers to develop a much wider range of features and products for the domestic market than they would for the export market, and as we see in examples of evolution in the Galapagos, the level of specialization for niche environments can reach extreme levels. This is pretty clever, linguistically.