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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."
Why do people persist in propagating the myth that there's cultural opposition to US products? Apple absolutely dominates the MP3 category with the iPod here, and the Macbooks sell like gangbusters. US cars don't sell well because a) they don't sell well in the US either b) half of the overseas models don't even come in RHD versions. Of course they don't sell. I won't consider an iPhone for all the reasons others have listed. 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?
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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.
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?
The reason I bought it was that it had one feature that actually worked, unlike other phones -- a web browser that didn't suck. I had been waiting for that for a LONG time.
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
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.
This shows just how shoddy WIRED stories are fabricated and sensationalized. I can't help but take that into account in reading future WIRED stories. WIRED credibility is seriously called into question by such blatant errors which articles source denies.
What's past is NOT ALWAYS prologue for the future!
$344 of actual examples of popular Windows Mobile apps included on the iPhone:
-Dashboard: WorldMate Pro $75 "world clocks and weather forecasts, flight and travel information"
-real email client: Pocket Informant $25 "replacement for Pocket Outlook on the Pocket PC"
-real web browser: none seem to exist.
-real contacts: Photo Contacts PRO $30
-Photo browser: Imageer $15
-iPod: Pocket Player MP3 player $20
-Movies: Pocket DVD studio $30
-TV: HandiTV $20 "watch TV from mobile devices"
-Dial up networking: PDANet $34 "use your mobile as a modem!"
-Calculator: Revolutionary Calculator $30
-Touch screen type input: Full Screen Keyboard $10
-PDF: PDF Reader $25
-Notes: List Pro $30 âoeManage your notesâ
Wow... I had no idea windows mobile apps were so expensive! I just got a touch recently and have about 20 apps installed on it, all but three of which were free. The three I bought were $0.99, $1.99, and $2.99. The most expensive app I saw while browsing was an incredible VNC client that does everything plus makes breakfast, for $24.99. over 1/2 the apps in the above list are more expensive than that.
Does MS get some insane cut on the apps or what? Why are they so incredibly more expensive?
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
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? 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.
End anonymous moderation and posting on
Do trade barriers count as "cultural opposition", though? Political and economic opposition, sure. But cultural?
The "cue the foo posts in 3, 2, 1..." posts will commence with no subsequent foo posts in 3, 2, 1...
My partners and I had the #1 Music app in Japan for several weeks last month (Boombox - http://tiny.cc/Lrd5g), so they are definitely interested in the iPhone. Just because they don't buy the phone in the same numbers as in the US doesn't mean they hate it. It seems like it's doing fairly well over there.
...which apparently didn't include TFA. Wired fabricated a quote about how the iPhone is lame compared to Japanese phones, and tried to attach it to two separate Japanese "authorities" on the subject, and both of those people then repudiated Wired's attribution and said that actually the iPhone is their favorite phone. The whole point of the article is that the iPhone is doing fairly well and people like it a lot over there -- the main thing holding it back is its carrier, which is sort of an underdog. And it turns out the iPhone is primarily responsible for major growth in that carrier anyway.
So, you're basically repeating the same myths that the entire article was written to refute, since the article explicitly responds to most of your points... but by referring to "everything you've read", you still got modded informative. Oh well...
I am the man with no sig!
Good point. If only it cited its sources, thus allowing some way for its claims to be verified.
Come on now. This story is about blatant journalistic fraud. They give explicit documentation on how Wired completely fabricated important facts in order to make a sensational-sounding story. If their claim was "The iPhone is the best thing evar and EVERYONE LOVES IT", you'd have a point, but the article is mostly about how Wired repeatedly lied in its article, and then they present data to basically argue "the iPhone is doing pretty okay in Japan". They aren't making particularly inflated claims...
I am the man with no sig!
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.
In 2006 -- the year that Congress went from GOP to Democratic control -- there were 33 Senate races. Six Republican incumbents and no Democratic incumbents were defeated. There were three open seats. So 24 Senators out of 33 were re-elected.
In the House, twenty-two GOP incumbents got the boot and there 34 open seats (including primary election losers); 379 out of 435 got re-elected.
So in a particularly "revolutionary" and "tumultuous" election, 72% of Senators and 87% of Representatives were re-elected.
I'd have to call that people "re-electing" their congressmen.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
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.
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.
I live in Japan and have been here for just over 9 years. And just about everyone I know (Japanese and foreigners alike) either have an iPhone or are dying to get one. Yours truly included.