Slashdot Mirror
iPod Takes Japan by Storm
conq writes "BusinessWeek reports on the soaring popularity of the iPod in Japan. From the article: 'iPod mania is alive and well in Japan -- one of the most competitive consumer-electronics markets on the planet. Despite an array of well-entrenched Japanese rivals, such as Sony and Matsushita, the iPod had cornered 51.3% of the digital-music player market as of the end of 2005, up from about 32% in 2004, according to research firm BCN. Sony was a distant second with 16.2%, while Panasonic grabbed just 8.2% of the market.'"
... and I saw a LOT of people wearing iPods in the trains, walking on the streets, and at the Narita airport. I talked with a few people about the iPod, and most were using them for Japanese pop music ripped from CDs: I did not meet anyone who had used the iTunes store.
Further, most of the models I saw were the video iPod or the Nano. Very few older photo iPods, and none of the earlier generations.
I'd say that the iPod was the dominant music player that I saw (although there were a few portable CD players)
...how well a Hello Kitty version would sell... e.a.e.
If I could, I'd destroy you all.
Apparently, you don't even have to go that far. All you need to do is put it in your pocket with your keys, then you can get lots of money back because "It scratches easily"
XBox-Fanboys constantly claim that these evil Japanese racists only buy Japanese products.
How is that possible?
Japanese do exhibit nationalistic pride (it's not racism). It's similar to how many Americans will only buy American cars and trucks.
iPod style manages overcome the bias, because it is more stylish (which is important to teenagers) than other products. It's cool to own [and wear] an iPod so whether or not it was made in Japan doesn't matter.
X-box does not share such a cool factor, it's an equivalent to PS2, so nationalism becomes the deciding factor.
D6 63 0D 70 89 81 BB 8E 7B 7C 5F 5D 54 EA AB 73
> Watch this astroturfer get modded up.
Yeah, right.. because it's not possible that something was actually designed well, and has a much better user interface than the competition.. Do you only believe negative reviews?
I'm in much the same position as the original poster, I bought a cheap MP3 player, then later moved to an iPod. The difference is night and day, Apple did it right.. Not only the iPod user interface, which is good, but the iTunes application for managing your music is leaps and bounds better than the alternatives.
I'm also a longtime Linux user. But, I moved from Linux on a Thinkpad to MacOS on a PowerBook for similar reasons. MacOS is just well done, as are the included apps, while still giving me the normal Unix capabilities under the hood.
And on the astroturf thing -- an "astroturfer" would be a newly created user account to be thrown away, or an AC, not an account created ~6 years ago (5 digit uid).
So which other players let you rate your music on the portable device and build playlists that include song rating as a filter? And update those smart-playlists in real time as the traits of a song change, like it's playcount, rating, last-played-date?
This is the killer feature of the iPod for me. When I get new songs, they go into a playlist of 'unrated' songs. They stay there until I give them a rating, and then I can pull up the playlist for 4-5 star songs and get all the music I like and none of the stuff I don't. And if I want, I can _still_ browse by album/artist like you are doing.
It's not about having the most features, it's about having features that the majority of people want.
You don't get it because you haven't used it.
The iPod's scroll wheel isn't just about scrolling up and down, it's about all of the other things it ALSO can do. You really do need to use one.
Playlists? I promise, you might HAVE playlists, but they're not like the iTunes playlists. If you don't understand what I mean, you need to get iTunes and create a few smart playlists. Rate your music. Organize it in a way that once you start to see how it applies to the iPod you will suddenly start to realize why iPod lovers love theirs and why they tend to literally give away their old MP3 players.
You seem to be under the impression that just because the "features" in the iPod are present in other players that they are implimented as well.
Use an iPod. Actually go get one, play with iTunes, and see what it's about. No. Seriously. It will change your mind.
"Everything you know is wrong. (And stupid.)"
Moderation Totals: Wrong=2, Stupid=3, Total=5.
It's not about the general features, all massive storage media players have these, it's about the small things.
A lot of companies try to improve a product by %100 by adding one new feature, but the iPod improves 100 of the existing features by %1.
This is what makes it so good, the small things, and so forth. Plus the simplistic design and so on. Buttons are annoying to use and hard on fingers, and more importantly hard to use in pockets. So, the add the click wheel where all you have to do is turn it a little bit to do whatever it will do.
It's the small things, the amount of effort put into perfecting these devices and the ease of use on the UI that makes them so great.
It's a good product, and on top of that, iPods are a recognizable name so they are consumers' first choice. Just like how the WalkMans were popular in the '80s, iPods have taken that place.
Er, no, sorry... you've got that backwards.
Apple makes a healthy profit on the iPods: http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,119799,
They do make some money on the music sold through iTMS, but it's a pittance compared to the percentage they make on the hardware. Steve's basically said that iTMS exists to drive iPod sales.
Smell that? You smell that? Burning karma, son. Nothing in the world smells like that...
I have an iPod and keep trying each new version of itunes, hoping that one day i'll like it.
However, until now, I love my iPod but cannot stand itunes. Instead I use jriver media center, which also has excellent ipod and podcast support. It is much more versatile and advanced than itunes, however it is not free. It can handle huge libraries (I have almost 100'000 tracks on a remote disk) very well and fast.
itunes just can't copy with that.