Slashdot Mirror
Why Japan Hates the iPhone
Ponca City, We love you writes "With a high level of technical sophistication, critical customers, and high innovation rate, Japan is the toughest cell phone market in the world. So it's not surprising that although Apple is the third-largest mobile supplier in the world, selling 10 million units in 2008, in Japan the iPhone is selling so poorly it's being offered for free. The country is famous for being ahead of its time when it comes to technology, and the iPhone just doesn't cut it. For example, Japanese handset users are into video and photos — and the iPhone has neither a video camera, multimedia text messaging, nor a TV tuner. Pricing plans in Japan are also very competitive, and the iPhone's $60-and-up monthly plan is too high compared to competitors; a survey lat year showed that among Japanese consumers, 91% didn't want to buy an iPhone. The cellular weapon of choice in Japan would be the Panasonic P905i, a fancy cellphone that doubles as a 3-inch TV and features 3-G, GPS, a 5.1-megapixel camera, and motion sensors for Wii-style games. 'When I show this to visitors from the US, they're amazed,' according to journalist Nobi Hayashi, who adds, 'Carrying around an iPhone in Japan would make you look pretty lame.'"
Or maybe good taste is relative and not an absolute.
The iPhone is inferior in lots of ways. It has NO stereo bluetooth support! It also lacks bluetooth IP networking for tethering to your laptop, and it doesn't use the standard USB mini-B cable.
The iPhone needs a lot of improvement before I would consider it.
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
Because we're at the behest of the phone companies, not the other way around. They can comfortably sit on technology, and decide when to release/market it for the most $$$.
Then not only are you stuck with older technology, you're locked out of exploiting that technology to its fullest extent, by the same companies who have a secondary market peddling crappy closed source software.
Roll on OpenMoko.
"'Carrying around an iPhone in Japan would make you look pretty lame.'"
God, how I wish I could get that Japanese cellphone with built-in 3" TV (Panasonic P905i) because I've always chosen cellphones out of regard of what Japanese teenagers might think of me! :-p
Sorry, I'll just stick with the iPhone, and upgrade to a phone based on Android when it matures. I would have love to have gone with an openmoko phone but that platform was pretty much stillborn. :(
Japanese cellphones are way way ahead of ours? Next thing you know, you'll be telling us that third-world countries have faster interweb access than we do - without bandwidth caps. This is old news.
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
Maybe we just need stop believing that we all must have a cell phone and stop buying the crap about which you are complaining? Or we all buy stripped down, inexpensive models with basic plans.
What you may not be factoring in is that the vast majority of the American cell phone-buying public thinks the iPhone is the greatest thing since sliced bread. They don't care about Linux, and they don't know what Japan is doing outside of their anecdotal awareness that the Japanese are very tech-savvy.
If you want the government to force cell phone companies and carriers to do anything it will cost you tax dollars - probably a greater amount relative to the time you will have to wait for the cell phone companies/carriers to come to your awareness in their own time.
Help fight poverty: Punch a poor person.
It's totally true... their gadgets are indeed bleeding edge, but American consumers wouldn't put up with the buggy nature of their gadgetry. We eventually get much of the same stuff, after the Japanese public has been kind enough to beta test it for us :)
By the way, even by slashdot standards... this is REALLY old news. Forbes was claiming the iPhone was doomed in Japan over a year ago. If it succeeded despite all of that, well THAT would be some news.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Although the Japanese and a number of Asian countries are "ahead of us" (read USA) when it comes to technology, most Americans I know of still regard the USA to be the most technologically advanced country in the world. It baffles me.
Just last week, I was in Shanghai and I can say that from the Magnetic Levitation train to the technology that runs and manages public transit, those folks are way ahead of us.
When I rode the subway in New York on return to USA, you could not blame me for thinking I am in a country of the fifties. What's happened to the USA?
Japan has its own Reality Distortion Field.
One that makes Jobs' RDF look like that worn-out magician at the street corner that never manages to get any of his lame tricks right.
- These characters were randomly selected.
Japan's culture of usability is "different" from ours to say the least.
Having worked in the electronics industry, I can tell you that Japanese users place high value on features and technical complexity. Mastering a technically complex device is viewed as an accomplishment.
Look at some of the electronics designed for the Japanese market - rows and rows of tiny buttons, incomprehensible menus, difficult to read displays; then look at electronics designed for the US market - touch screens, big legible fonts and buttons, simple - easy to navigate menus.
(Most of) western society places a high value on ease of use over functionality. Apple does very well in those markets. Japanese culture is very detail oriented and places value on technical complexity and function.
It's a culture thing, and Apple needs to understand that if they want to succeed in the Japanese market.
-ted
Because all these articles are talking rubbish. Japan is not ahead of us here, they just don't want the same thing as us. I explicitly don't want a phone that's a 3" TV, I don't want a phone that's a 5 megapixel camera with a shit lens, I don't want a phone that's a video camera, I don't want a phone that can send MMSes (especially when it can send email).
I want a phone that's simple to use, beautiful, and gets on with being a phone, which the iPhone is absolutely ideal for.
p.s. I *definitely* don't want a phone shaped like hello kitty.
They're very biased towards home-grown stuff.
...the iPod sells well in Japan...
"You can't allow somebody to commit the crime before you detain them." [Condoleezza Rice]
No, the question we should ask us is precisely "why is Japan so far ahead of us technologically". I want to know why they can have all that fancy stuff on their phones, and I can't. The question "why is Japan so far behind us in soft technologies?" is not for us, but for Japan. It's their problem, so it's them who should think about it. Why waste time on thinking why somebody else has a problem you don't?
In Japan, only old people use iPhones?
No, the fact is that the iphone is a piece of crap that doesn't do anything special. It's a triumph of marketing.
The only reason the iphone is popular in the US is that other US cell phone options are so crappy, but that's a reflection of what the US carriers are selling.
That would be a good theory were it true, but the fact is the US cell phone market has always been even further behind than just skipping the beta phase. Every time I'd visit and go into a shop selling mobiles I'd have to chuckle to myself at the stuff they were selling which was years behind what we had even in Europe, let alone Japan.
This is why the original iPhone was a flop everywhere but the US (yes it was even a flop in Europe), people were looking at it and thinking what's the big deal when it's camera, it's memory, it's lack of custom apps, lack of MMS, lack of 3G, lack of GPS and so on made it a laughably poor device, whilst in the US it was pretty state of the art.
Move forward to the iPhone 3G and Apple have realise their mistakes and have moved forward a bit, but as stated in the summary, the iPhone still lacks features that many in Europe and Japan have come to expect.
The US is a world leader on most things, but cell phones are one of the few products the US was simply years behind on, often never even getting some of the high end Nokia models we enjoyed in Europe For example, did the US ever even get the Nokia 7650 in the end? a phone that in 2001 had a camera, could play Doom, browse the web, run Java apps- in fact, everything the original iPhone had minus touch screen but plus a whole bunch of other features (MMS, custom apps).
Apple realised the mobile gap was in the US and took advantage of that, they couldn't compete immediately with the companies like Nokia that had been doing it years and the US gave them a place to get started without ever needing to do so. Once their foot was in the door they could fairly quickly move on with their technology to produce a phone that was a little more attractive in Europe/Japan, if they keep it up and keep going they'll do well.
At the end of the day though, the summary comes as no suprise as it really is quite similar to the story here in Europe. It's not to slag Apple off, because if the US was as uptodate on mobile technology as Europe it's questionable whether Apple could've got it's foot in the door as easily as it did and more fool Nokia et. al. for not taking the opportunity to exploit the rather backwards US cell phone market themselves. I think this is also why the iPhone has the following it does, not necessarily because it's any better than other phones outside North America- it still lacks a lot of features European and Japanese phones have, but because it's a decent mid-range phone in Europe/Japan and more importantly, because it is light years ahead of much of what the US ever really had before it.
i have a blackberry with built in gps
the gps is disabled. why? because verizon wants me to buy their retarded cell phone tower triangulation location service for $10/ month. the gps chip is sitting right on my phone. free. locked. i downloaded the free gmail app (amazing they let me do that, huh?), and all i can do is a get a rough approximation of my location. i've got the hardware, on the phone, to get the free signal. and verizon won't let me
fucking evil, fucking retarded. it does nothing, dear verizon, except fill me with a burning hatred for you
now i can understand a cell company competing with the services of another cell company, and blocking this or that signal that is a PAID service
but when they go out and start squashing well-established FREE signal services, WHEN THE HARDWARE TO GET IT IS ALREADY ON THE FUCKING PHONE, i begin to channel my inner communist. that is the most evil retarded bullshit there is. free market business practices at their most evil
so i agree with you, i can see them blocking the free hdtv digital signals. 100% possible
the only redoubt i can consider is that, being a free market, t-mobile, sprint, etc., should unlock free gps and unlock free tv signals, if they aren't already, and make a marketing bonanza on that fact
you'd see verizon quickly lose customers, and quietly reverse their fucking evil shit sucking behavior
they already lost me, i totally hate them for that, and have told them in no uncertain terms
evil motherfuckers. blocking free gps in order to sell me their half assed triangulation service. the hardware is already built into THE DAMN PHONE you fucking asswipes
die you sleazy shitsucking verizon, die
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Thank God someone else feels this way. I'm so sick of people getting iPhones and then insisting on whipping them out and showing them off every three seconds. It's not that impressive, every douche already owns one. I've seen it a million times. No, I don't wish I had one. If I wanted one, I'd already have it. I just don't think it's worth the money. The summary alone says it all - no video? no MMS? My friend's free POS phone has that. It's a mediocre phone in a sexy package with a touchscreen. No surprise the Japanese aren't interested.
PS - can we avoid turning this into a fanboy flamewar - just this once? I called it sexy...
You are using English. Please learn the difference between loose and lose; they're, there, and their; your and you're.
True, and there are things about Japanese culture which make their cel phone market very different from ours. One of the biggest things is the way in which the Japanese commute to and from work: Japan has a much higher use of public transportation than does the U.S., and the Japanese are heavy users of rail travel. This means, according to the last figures I checked, the average Japanese working person has an hour commute to and from work which is, essentially, free time. Contrast this to the U.S., in which the majority of people drive to work.
To me, this explains a lot of the Japanese demand for the use of video and TV on the cel phones, and from the cel phone networks: they have the time and inclination to use those services. Contrast this to the U.S., in which people have to (supposedly) concentrate on their driving; we have lots of talk radio here, something to listen to during that commute which requires no hands.
Add to this all of the other commuting the Japanese do via rail and you have a market which just doesn't exist in the U.S. I think this holds true in Europe as well, which also has a higher incidence of public transportation use than the U.S. We drive here, a lot, and that niche just doesn't exist. Most Americans get their online TV and video either at work or at home. Which is to say that population and work patterns influence technology adoption and use as much as, or more than, GUI design and technical achievement.
At least that's my theory.
I am a believer of momentum and curves.
I disagree, the iPhone was the first to offer a touch screen based UI, a solid internet browser, a usable mobile calendar, and a viable iPod replacement. Is it the end all be all of cell phones, no. However, what made the iPhone so good was the software stack more than the hardware stack. The iPhone software stack is still by far the best on the market. The hardware is just slightly above average, but I (personally) think Apple did this to create an upgrade path. For example. want GPS? Upgrade from V1 to V2. Next will be, want video? Upgrade from V2 to V3 ... etc.
Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws-Plato
How long ago did you live in Japan ... 10 ... 15 years ago?
The P905i is already outdated. I've had mine for over a year now. Lots of the phones they have now make the P905i look like ancient tech. Motion sensors which rotate the clock display so it stays upright as you turn the phone 10Mpx cameras with touch screens for selecting your photo subject. 4 inch tv screens with multimedia capability that would make your head spin. You can record your favorite TV show while you're at work, bring your phone home, plug it into your TV and watch the show on the big screen. Complete webkit stack (Yes, that means you can become a walking web server).
Seriously, you're iPhone sucks compared to what's out now.
Eh, for me it was cheaper to get an iPhone, both phone wise and plan wise than a Blackberry or any other 3g capable device.
I couldn't care less about MMS, I can upload photos to facebook or get stuff off of my e-mail.
I also have no desire to watch videos, if I'm going to watch TV or a movie, it's going to be off of my DVR or computer on my 52" TV and 7.1 surround system on my comfortable couch with a beer, not on my tiny ass cell phone. Youtube, the internet and the app store provide more than enough instant entertainment if I'm stuck somewhere or bored.
I have no need for turn by turn directions either, I actually prefer google maps + GPS.
My biggest complaint about the iPhone is that you have to crack it to do certain things, like copy over ringtones.
The iPhone doesn't suck, you're just being anti-trendy and generally pissed. I'm not a fan of trendy shit or Apple in general, but the iPhone is a pretty good device.