I suppose Japan is suffering from the island effect, at least in their mobile sector. Like Finland, they got a preview into the smartphone world (Japan with i-mode, Finland with WAP). Companies were built, investments were made, and they flopped, burning out a lot of entrepreneurs and killing investor confidence. And then the real smartphone boom happened, and we moved into it too cautiously.
I don't know enough of the French software business, but it would be reasonable to assume that they had something similar when Minitel was replaced by the web. How did the companies react and recover?
I think you are forgetting an important part of the equation: the interior market. In France it was much easier for entrepreneurs to move from the Minitel to internet, than for people to trust a new medium over a trusted one that worked seemlessly for decades.
So while your average American was emptying his wallet buying stuff on the web, French were still checking their bank accounts on the Minitel. That makes for a slow start, but eventually we moved on and there has been a lot of successful web startup in France (that usually end up either moving to SV, and/or being bought by American giant, but that's another story).
I don't know enough of the French software business, but it would be reasonable to assume that they had something similar when Minitel was replaced by the web. How did the companies react and recover?