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Leopard Claims Half the Japanese OS Market In October
hoagiecat writes "Is Apple like all those bands who claim to be "huge in Japan"? Leopard accounted for 53 percent of boxed operating systems sold in Japan in October — even though it was only on sale for the last six days of the month. 'The software went on sale worldwide on Oct. 26 with sales kicking off at 6 p.m. local time in each country. Users in New Zealand and Australia got their hands on Leopard first, but Tokyo saw the first launch at an Apple retail store. About 200 people lined up in light rain to buy the software at Apple's store in the ritzy Ginza district of Tokyo. Lines also formed at other Apple stores across the country and at major electronics retailers, where special events were held to mark the start of sales. Combined with other sales of other operating systems including Tiger, Apple had an overall 60.7 percent share of the market in October -- that's a big jump from the 15.5 percent share it had in September, which was itself the highest share Apple had managed to get so far in 2007. '"
Nokia published some figures for EDGE vs 3G chips a while back, but I can't find them now. At idle, 3G uses slightly less power than GSM/EDGE. On voice calls, 3G uses roughly double the power. For data, 3G uses about a quarter of the power for the same data throughput.
The biggest drain for 3G phones is that they have to keep the GSM radio polling so they can fall back without going off air for a period when they lose the 3G signal. In Japan where there is no GSM network, you don't have that inefficiency to worry about.
How much do you know about the Japanese mobile phone market?
Do you live in Japan?
Do you speak and/or read Japanese?
Do you have an account with a Japanese mobile phone provider?
There is no EDGE in Japan, nor is there GPRS or even GSM.
Japan has 3G (UMTS/W-CMDA), CDMA (different frequencies than North America, so most North American phones CDMA phones won't roam in Japan, and no EV-DO yet), and local systems (PDC and PHS).
Yes, the latter are pre-3G systems, but to refer to them as 2G is somewhat misleading since in the context under discussion 2G means GSM/GPRS/EDGE.
The iPhone is an GSM/GPRS/EDGE device with 850/900/1800/1900. There is no GSM/GPRS/EDGE in Japan on any band. An iPhone will not roam in Japan.
The only non-Japanese phones that will roam in Japan are 3G phones with UMTS 2100, and some CDMA phones from carriers outside of North America.
Personally, I need a computing environment that supports both Japanese and English seamlessly. Leopard fits the bill nicer than anything else I've ever used, including Vista (which I have to admit is pretty good).
This
The main reason I haven't upgraded yet is that there is, at present, a significant bug in Kotoeri (the Japanese IME) for Leopard. If you type the word "hatake" (which means "field") and scroll through the list of potential kanji, and you get to the "display more" option, the entire IME freezes and is impossible to recover. The same thing happens with "hisashi", and I'm sure a number of other words as well.
.1 release.
There are videos of this floating around YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o1pVOJL41x0), and I checked it out myself at the local Apple store. Total IME lock-up, and it uses up 100% of your processor time.
Other than that glaring bug, Leopard is easily the most friendly Japanese OS out there, and it now has a big-name Japanese dictonary & thesaurus, as well as J-E and E-J dictionaries built right in.
Here's hoping Apple gets their shit sorted out for the