Japanese "Hate" For the iPhone All a Big Mistake

MBCook writes "AppleInsider has posted a great article explaining that Wired's story about Japanese iPhone hate was completely false and has been edited at least twice. The comments in the article were recycled and taken out of context, with those interviewed blogging about the mistakes. The piece then goes on to analyze the iPhone's standing in Japan, as well as some of the major factors working for and against it. At last it points out that the Wall Street Journal tried the same myth of failure just after the phone's launch in Japan, recycled from a myth the year before, pushed by a research company with a possible anti-Apple agenda."

Comments

Everyone hates congress too

[peektwice]

but they keep re-electing their congressmen. Same thing applies here.

Re:Everyone hates congress too

[beelsebob]

Why would I intentionally saddle myself with a phone that has fewer features - ALOT fewer - than my current Softbank model? A model that's 1.5 years old now?
Because less is often more.

Take for example the most commonly cited complaint about the iPhone â" no MMS. Why would you want MMS? You have email. All MMS does is adds another option to the menu system and makes life more complex. Not only that but because there's no fixed standard, it more often than not sends messages that the receiving phone can't read. And finally, MMS is massively more costly to send than email.

So there you go, you'd buy something with fewer features, because often, fewer features but well implemented is better.

Re:Everyone hates congress too

[commodore64_love]

Status symbols are for fools. I have no interest in "keeping up with the Joneses" or even what they think about me using some ten-year-old phone. Most of today's economic recession was caused by people boring money they didn't have to try to impress others with shiny new gadgets/homes. AKA fools.

Re:Everyone hates congress too

[pohl]

Do trade barriers count as "cultural opposition", though? Political and economic opposition, sure. But cultural?

Re:Everyone hates congress too

[Anonymous Coward]

wtf bullshit... do a google search? you do a google search, and then give us links; don't just make unfounded claims. USA has plenty of trade barriers and domestic subsidies, while denying their smaller trade partners the same

Re:Everyone hates congress too

[MrMista_B]

...except they don't.

In case you didn't notice, a little while back, Congress went from mostly Republican, to mostly Democrat.

I'd hardly call that 're-electing' their congressmen.

Re:Everyone hates congress too

[Archimonde]

You are missing the point of what MMS is (or was) all about. It is very similar to instant/push e-mail. You can write as many text as you want, add some pictures and recipient will get the message virtually instantly, *on their mobile phone*. I can imagine that the e-mail is clearly superior if you have push system installed (exchange, mobileme, whatever) and you receive the e-mail immediately. But, if I'm not very much mistaken, large majority of mobile phones don't have push mail. I can see "smartphones" fairly frequently, but a very small fragment of those people even know about push mail, even less than those have it configured to work that way. I'm talking about Croatia here though, it probably is different from country to country.

I'm all for using e-mail for text communication between mobile phones but telecoms don't think the same. Apart of the push mail problem, the data charges are extremely expensive (especially for teens who probably send pics more than other part of population) so you are left with sms (which is not that much expensive, user-wise), and mms for sending your pics. MMS in the beginning was very expensive but they did lower the price a bit, but my observation is that it is seldom used.

My point is that the MMS is the push mail for the majority of people with non-push mail mobile phones. It is a bit arrogant in a way not to include it in the default sms iphone app. Other mobile phones handle mms pretty much as the sms with attachments. That means you don't need to have special mms apps nor additional interface bloat. I personally don't miss mms much on my iphone, but I do hate it when somebody asks "have you seen the $cool_picture, I've sent you 10 minutes ago?".

Re:Everyone hates congress too

[taskiss]

"Look, if you don't know how to use Google, then, I really don't need to rationalize anything for you, do I?"

tjstork, the person making the claims is the one needing to substantiate those claims, not the one challenging them.

You were wrong when you identified a trade barrier as a cultural one, now you're trying to avoid responsibility for making unsubstantiated assertions.

As of this moment, you've shown no basis for your opinion. Someone telling you "Put up or shut up" would be entirely justified in doing so.

Re:Everyone hates congress too

[Anonymous Coward]

From what I could tell (from internet, since I haven't been there) is that there isn't that much cultural opposition in Japan. They seem happy to accept things from foriegners in that regard. (They had no problems taking in Victorian influences when they industrialized, and likewise other western ideas post WWII and currently.) It's just that they take what parts they like and remix it completely into its own weird-ified Japanese equivalent. Look how well they accepted a corporate icon like Ronald McDonald and made it their own for instance.

Now where I'd see "cultural opposition" is in parts of the mideast. They're happy and open to trade and goods, but try bringing up anything involving some aspects of western style freedoms -- you might want to duck a shoe or two, if not running away from an all-out stoning. Even simple things like equality and freedom of speech/thought don't seem to go all that well in some places over there.

As for the iPhone in Japan, they don't so much hate it as rather they have better options already. It's like trying to give a wind-up toy to to a kid that has really cool R/C robots n' stuff.

Re:Everyone hates congress too

[Zero__Kelvin]

"Because it's not a myth."

And how ma' brotha! Someday I hope there will be McDonald's restaurants all over the world, that Marlboro cigarettes will be prized by overseas citizens, and that Levi's will be a world reknowned brand, but until then, we just have to accept the truth and stop thinking it is a myth!

Re:Everyone hates congress too

[seventhevening]

I have been there. I never saw any cultural opposition at all. The iPod was popular there, mcdonalds is pretty popular (and has some cool exclusive menu items), several english books were recently translated into Japanese and were very popular. Hollywood movies can perform well in Japanese box office. MLB seems to be more popular there than here. I think really the Japanese applaud things that are new or that fit the attributes they want. Where it comes from isn't that important. We just like playing a xenophobe card everytime the iPhone doesn't do well because it lacks features the Japanese want, or when the Xbox and 360 sell poorly because it lacks the kinds of titles the Japanese like best. It strikes me as extremely arrogant to complain that the only reason a product designed by the mighty Americans isn't selling MUST be because of xenophobia and couldn't be because they just don't WANT it.

Re:Everyone hates congress too

[Veggiesama]

Status symbols are for fools. I have no interest in "keeping up with the Joneses" or even what they think about me using some ten-year-old phone. Most of today's economic recession was caused by people boring money they didn't have to try to impress others with shiny new gadgets/homes. AKA fools.

Correction: most of today's economic recession was caused by profit-driven lenders allowing people to borrow money and purchase homes that were beyond their means.

You can't fault people for taking a good opportunity when they see it (stupid people or not), but you CAN fault snake oil salesmen for knowingly pushing shitty products onto stupid people for short-term gain.

I don't mind fools as much as I mind people taking advantage of fools.

Either way...

[Anonymous Coward]

Who gives a fuck? Japan hates the iPhone, Japan doesn't hate the iPhone; it's a god-damned fucking piece of electronics, not an economic programme or school of politico-philosophical thought. Is it really so important for your sense of self-satisfaction that people you'll never meet in a country you never go to buy the same plastic shit as you do? Fucking Christ, what a sorry species.

Re:Either way...

[BadAnalogyGuy]

It is instinctive that people want to feel that they are making the right decisions. So when other people act similarly they receive validation that their choices are correct, even in minor lifestyle choices like buying Apple products.

So when a whole country (well, not really) rejects a lifestyle choice that an iPhone user made, it makes them uncomfortable and they try to find reasons why their choice is different from the foreign norm. In this case, either they try to invalidate the data (which is hard to do) or they try to explain away the problem by diminishing the importance of the data.

It is just a phone, but for many people it is also an expression of their personality. They don't want to be diminished, so they seek out those who are like-minded. This is the same type of behavior that can be seen at comic book conventions, furry conventions, and Star Trek conventions. Those of us who have no horse in this race should probably just stay as far away from the commotion as possible.

Re:Either way...

[mdwh2]

I agree, exactly - trying to claim that Japan "hates" the Iphone is buying into the pro-Apple Iphone hype just as much. As you say, it suggests that people in the US are offended that the Iphone isn't the best selling phone elsewhere (if it is even in the US - that seems to be another myth based on hype), and it implies that even for people who don't like it, they view it as a special case, in the same way that people "hate" Windows. People might hate Windows because it's the dominant platform, but it's laughable to suggest that the Iphone is anywhere near comparable (if the article was about the Ipod, sure, that would make sense.)

The reality is that lots of people, especially outside of the US, just don't care about the Iphone, just as they don't care about most other arbtirary models of phone. ("But, but, it I can browse the web, and look at maps!" I hear someone cry - yes, just like every other phone that's been around for years.)

And now we have this joke of an article trying to spin the so-called Apple "hate" as being some kind of agenda. Um, as opposed to the pro-Apple stance that most of the rest of the media take (e.g., the way we get an article about the Iphone everytime it does something that isn't anything special - consider the joke of an article yesterday, Use Your iPhone To Get Out of a Ticket)?

It a nice refreshing change to see an article pointing out that not everyone is mad about the Iphone, and that phones in other countries have had the hyped features for years. Sorry, that's a fact - no amount of whinging that this is an "anti-Apple agenda" will change that fact.

Re:Either way...

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

Who gives a fuck? Japan hates the iPhone, Japan doesn't hate the iPhone;

I don't think that is the story here. I think the story is that the longer Fox owns the Wall Street Journal, the last we can trust their articles to not be utter fabrications or intentionally misleading. The real question to ask is what caused this particular bias.

Next article:

[Junior J. Junior III]

Why Slashdot Hates Journalistic Standards

I have to ask

[Sycraft-fu]

Who cares? Not who cares that Wired fucked up, but who cares if the Japanese do or don't like the iPhone? I mean Apple cares, because they want to sell as many as possible, but why does the average person care?

It seems to me like there is some misguided ideal in the US of an extremely tech savvy Japan. That the Japanese are far advanced technology wise, and if they don't like something, well it must be no good. Well, not really. Japan simply has a different set of tech priorities than the US. Huge surprise there, it's a different culture, and a different environment.

Well what this means is that if something succeeds or fails in Japan simply means that it is something the Japanese do or don't like/find useful. That has no bearing at all on how good of a product it is. Something very well may bomb in Japan and do well in the US, or fail in the US and have huge sales in Japan. Sometimes it is just because of different needs. High end headphones are more common in Japan because of the small living spaces. For the same reason, full sized speakers are not. If you live in a 200sq ft apartment, it matters that your sound gear doesn't take up too much space. If you live in a 2000sq ft house, it really isn't a concern.

Personally, I don't give a shit what the Japanese do or don't like. Doesn't affect me at all. They can do as they please, and I'll do as I please. If I look at a cellphone I am going to get it based on if it does what I want, not how popular it is, and certainly not how popular it is in a country I don't live in.

So regardless of the truth of Wired's story, who cares? Get the iPhone because you like it (or don't because you don't), not because it gets the approval of anyone else.

WIRED credibility?

[hwyhobo]

WIRED credibility is seriously called into question by such blatant errors which articles source denies.

WIRED credibility? I don't want to be disrespectful, but do people take WIRED seriously as a news source? I always thought it was just hundreds of pages of ads with a few fillers here and there masquerading as articles.

To be sure, they didn't invent it, they were just particularly blatant about it. PC Magazine & others have done it before, but at least they tried the "comparo"-style fillers to attract readers and create a pretense of content. WIRED never bothered to go to such lengths. To quote WIRED is a bit like using one of those supermarket stand recycled-paper car trader brochures as a source of auto industry news.

Re:comparing prices of xPhone apps

[Anonymous Coward]

"real web browser: none seem to exist."

So Internet Explorer, Opera, Skyfire and the coming Fenric are not real web browsers? What's your definition?

Idiot Alert

[mdwh2]

I'm more concerned that someone is so petty as to trawl someone's posting history, just to make an ad hominem attack based on something that is completely irrelevant to the original post.

You fail basic reading comprehension anyway, since he was talking about health taxes, not insurance. He was talking about getting his money's worth from his taxes that he has to pay anyway - if Iphones were, heaven forbid, ever handed out to people, funded for taxation, then you can bet that he, and I, would be picking up our Iphones, since we paid for them anyway. Not to mention that his post was clearly not meant to be serious.

Here, however, keeping up with the Jones means throwing away money. If you can't see the difference between throwing money away, and taking what you've had to pay for anyway, no wonder you're happy to spend money on Iphones just to be cool.

A shame you aren't willing to be honest about your posting history, Anonymous Coward - what hypocrisy are you hiding?

The myth of Japan being 10 years ahead

[zerojoker]

I am sorry, but this is not true anymore. Or rather, it depends on how you define "ahead".
Japanese cell-phones are all about the "bling".
Take my phone for example, which looks great on the feature-list: 3 MP Camera, Japanese-English dictionary, Web-browser etc. etc.
Thing is, that most of the features are so hard to use, that noone ever uses them.
The Web-browser is a joke. It works in theory, in practice it completely fails at every second web-page.
Sure, you can view i-mode pages (which is quite a big thing in Japan) but in the "western"-world everyone is interested in the "real"-web.
There is basically no function to synch the calendar/mails with the PC. No software as far as I know (docomo). Nobody synchs his cellphone with the PC, that's why.
There is no bluetooth, even among the latest models, so, how to connect to your PC, i.e. for sharing mp3/pictures etc.?
It's so hard to enter a word in the dictionary (you have to go through 4 or 5 layers of menus), that you're faster looking it up in a paper-dictionary.
Japanese people use their phone for three things: Phone, e-mail/messaging and surfing i-mode.
That's it. In 2000, that was maybe 10 years ahead. Nowadays it's a joke.
btw, you know what was the comment of my gf, when I said that I would like to have a phone with a full qwerty-keyboard, complaining that, at that time, no phone was available?
Who would've want that anyway? It's too bulky, it looks ugly!
It's all about the bling (TM). If the iPhone sells reasonable it's not because of the revolutionary way of actually being able to use the features. It sells because it from Apple and considered "cool" and "western". Brand recognition, like Starbucks.

Re:The myth of Japan being 10 years ahead

[filthpickle]

It's all about the bling (TM)

I think that the forums here have conclusively proven that only Americans could be so crass. Are you suggesting that acting that way is just part of the human condition for some people? A bold statement sir.

Re:The myth of Japan being 10 years ahead

[Scrameustache]

the features are so hard to use, that noone ever uses them.

And that's why Apple gets away with higher prices for similar devices: Their interfaces are polished and shiny and functional.

There were MP3 players before the iPod, but none that worked so elegantly.

Re:The myth of Japan being 10 years ahead

[earthbound kid]

btw, you know what was the comment of my gf, when I said that I would like to have a phone with a full qwerty-keyboard, complaining that, at that time, no phone was available?

The Japanese I know prefer cellphone-style input for Japanese to qwerty. The Japanese alphabet just so happens to split up logically into ten groups, so it makes a lot of sense to use a number pad to type them. Combined with predictive text, it's pretty quick. On the other hand, the layout of the qwerty keyboard is basically random. So, the Japanese aren't really interested in using micro keyboards when a number pad works well enough and doesn't hurt your thumbs.

Re:They don't hate it.

[mdwh2]

I entirely agree - and similar is true for Europe.

I would argue that trying to claim they "hate" the Iphone is still pro-Apple hate in a way - "If they're not buying the Iphone, it couldn't possibly be that they're happier using existing phones that have already been doing what the Iphone does, and more - no, it must be because they have an irrational hate for it", rationalises the Iphone fan.

And then, for bonus points, we can follow up with an article whining that this is part of some "pro-Apple agenda" - which is indeed, just what's happened.

Re:No, bigot, Japanese houses suck.

[multimediavt]

Wow, it's just bigot-on-bigot action here! As a trained architect I can tell you that all of the size and amenity differences you pointed out as being better in American homes are all based in Western cultural norms. The data you used for housing longevity differences is also incorrect. In the U.S. homes are built to last 30 to 40 years (the average lifetime of a roof in a temperate climate).

You're just batting a thousand on this topic tjstork. I think it would be best for you to stop typing now.

It's not about free trade

[Swift2001]

It's about some guy who had an obvious anti-Apple agenda. Don't like Apple products? It's a free country. But this article was twisted unfairly to make the facts fit the conclusion. That's unacceptable to tech journalism, if it actually exists. If there's a story about the iPhone's acceptance or lack of acceptance in Japan, then tell us the facts.
It's getting so bad that even Wired is as useless as Fox or CNN to the provision of information. Enough yellow journalism, whether its source is the Hearst papers of yore or the hip Wired. Stop throwing sand in our eyes, you bastards.