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iPhone 3GS Is Number One In Japan
mudimba writes "The iPhone 3GS 32GB is currently the best selling phone in Japan (the 16GB version came in at number nine). This is in stark contrast to reports from earlier this year that the Japanese hate the iPhone. Nobody is sure what specific features caused the change of heart, though it is speculated that video capture and voice control might be part of the answer. When the 3G iPhone first came out it saw a spike in sales, but unlike the 3GS it was unable to outsell locally-made handsets."
No "Hatered" needed if the phone is missing an important feature like MMS, it just makes it inferior to other offerings. But that have changed now and its on pair in that area and ahead in several others, so its no surprise it sell well. I personally prefer a simpler/smaller more rugged phone, but I understand the appeal (!) of it, its a great product.
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The Japanese aren't brand-motivated
Japan is the leading market for luxury brands, like Gucci, Louis Vitton, Hermes etc. Brand motivation and recognition are sky high.
The Japanese aren't brand-motivated. They are quality-motivated. That's why Japanese cars are boring but last forever.
That's wrong. If you had spoken to a British or American consumer at the time of Japanese automotive boom, you would have found that they are just as quality motivated as the American consumer. And had you spoken to American or British or Italian automotive makers, you would have found some of them wanted quality but were just slightly misinformed as to how they should attain it.
As someone who's taken a course on this, we got the Japanese invention known as The House of Quality pounded into our heads. It's basically a far superior way to "define relationship between customer desires and the firm/product capabilities." The Japanese invented this, I don't know the exact origins (wish I did) but instead of it ended up as some weird business process patent it ended up being used by everyone over there. As a result, their cars didn't leak oil (like the British motorcycles) and they didn't slowly reject every screw that was holding them together. I'm sure the Japanese had many more tools at analyzing the engineering aspects of cars but the fact of the matter is that their engineering and quality control practices just exceeded anything anyone else had (if anyone else had quality control at the time).
Americans look for cool things, which is why American cars are flashy and muscular but also break down constantly and have terribly assembled trim.
This seriously got moderated up? Have you ever been to Tokyo? Have you seen how flashy that city is? Have you ever seen Japanimation, Japanese commercials or game shows? Flashy is all I can think of to describe that.
Your cultural stereotypes humor me. But I think you're suffering from some serious misinformation and anecdotes to which I could provide counter-anecdotes all day long. But both stances are merely an exercise in futility.
They knew, unlike the dopes who lick Steve Jobs' nutsack here in the US, that it was crap the moment they laid hands on it.
Well, if they laid hands on it, they've already purchased it and that's a win for Apple. Or are you saying that the (virtually) same reviews each culture read influenced them differently? The Japanese have more options than we do and they had things that were better than the original iPhones. Those weren't really marketed in America. The iPhone wasn't crap compared to what 90% of Americans were already using. That's the important point, not that American consumers are any stupider or smarter than Japanese consumers.
My work here is dung.
Indeed, although it's just as much a pro-Apple agenda that spread the news: if people don't like a product, it's much better if you can dismiss it as an irrational hatred, rather than considering the possibility that they might *gasp* actually prefer other phones.
For this news, I'd be curious to see market share. Since Apple only have one phone, and Nokia etc have loads of different products, looking at single phone sales whilst useful in some contexts, is not useful for judging who's number one (it's the multiple choice fallacy where votes get split between similar products).
There's also the obvious point that the phone has only just been released - it's misleading to claim "Number One", since this is a figure based on one month's sales, not quarterly or yearly, let alone total phones in existence.
And since the Iphone is the only phone that gets covered on Tech sites like Slashdot (god knows why), it's not surprising that they'll do fairly well. I fear we'll have a self-fulfilling prophecy where we end up with it being the most popular phone, precisely because of the coverage solely on this one phone. And then we'll end up with a monopoly platform on mobile platform that's more locked down and controlled by a single company. Nice one, Slashdot!
For all we know, those other phones may have been number one (indeed, one of them must have been), but we wouldn't have heard about it on Slashdot.
Consider - what was the Number One phone, last month in Japan, and why wasn't there a story about it? Or the Number One phone in the US, come to that? It's only news if it's unusual.
Of course I'll probably be modded down now for providing possible explanations that don't fit in with the pro-Apple viewpoint here.
I don't have any evidence, but if I had to guess I'd say that it's the app store that made the difference. The app store is truly transformative, in many non-obvious ways.
It brings network effects to the phone. For a while it seemed everyone I knew had a RAZR, but the popularity of the phone added no value to the individual user. With the iPhone, however, the popularity of the phone brings increased developer attention, which the app store translates to improved functionality, creating a positive feedback loop. Friends will also recommend apps to each other, further creating a network effect, and reminding the non-iphone-owning friends what they're missing.
The app store brings the best form of lock-in Windows ever had - But will it run my apps? - to the phone. Suddenly no non-iPhone can be a true upgrade, since you will likely lose some of your app functionality. Common things, like interfaces for major social sites, etc., will likely be standard, but everyone will have a different set of apps they consider crucial, which will make upgrading difficult. The breadth of the app store has brought the long tail to the phone. It also allows people to be very picky. I spent a several weeks testing out various todo lists on the iPhone, and I won't be happy to change phones unless it has a todo list that meets the very specific criteria I developed.
Certainly other phones will soon have access to app stores of their own, but the huge lead that Apple now has will make it very hard for someone else to catch up. They'll tout how they don't have the same approval headaches that the iPhone does, and that openness will be great. But we don't have to look far for lessons on how the popular operating system can be vastly inferior, yet still more successful than competitors.
The iPhone app store sets the iPhone up to succeed for all the reasons that Windows has. I think it's going to take a significant technology leap or other serious market disruption to stop them at this point. Regardless of how you feel about Apple, you have to respect the the way they've played this.
Contrary to what? Having screen estate completely removed for some buttons?
Actually, a cheap quartz Timex is more accurate than a Patek Philippe, or any other mechanical watch. People don't buy mechanical watches for accuracy.
Are you adequate?