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How Steve Jobs Got the iPhone Into Japan

Posted by samzenpus on from the back-in-the-day dept.

hcs_$reboot writes "Masatoshi Son, SoftBank CEO, remembers the early days when he tried to cut a deal with Steve Jobs in order to be the first to offer the not-even-named-iPhone-yet- 'new phone' from Apple, back in 2005. At the time, Son didn't even own a mobile carrier. He then purchased Vodafone, and was indeed the first to sell the iPhone in 2008 (then Au-Kddi in 2011, and DoCoMo in 2013). Today, 75% of smartphones sold in Japan are iPhones."

17 of 104 comments (clear)

  1. BULLSHIT! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    Android phones far outsell iPhones in Japan. See these charts as just one example

    http://kakaku.com/keitai/smartphone/

    IPhone sales only surpass Android sales for a few weeks after each new model comes out. Then it settles back down into the top 5 to 8 phones sold being Android phones.

    1. Re:BULLSHIT! by invictusvoyd · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Irrespective of what sells and what does not , both the iphone and the android have let down the geeks. Iphone is a decent platform but the proprietary bulls**t of apple is anything by geekiness.. The android on the other hand is pure evil . based on big data money models , google cares a squat about the users. The application layer is inherently insecure and the whole open sauce thing is pseudo.
      IMHO Both are crap phones .

    2. Re:BULLSHIT! by amoeba47 · · Score: 3, Informative

      kakaku.com is the largest online price comparison shopping site in Japan, it's very popular. The page shows a popularity ranking list of smartphones. Here's a link to a detail page (ninki ranking / popularity ranking) showing a longer list, most popular at the top http://kakaku.com/keitai/smart...

    3. Re: BULLSHIT! by Migity · · Score: 4, Insightful

      It's still bullshit because anybody can go on there and rate whatever they want. It's not a real chart of sold items but a popularity contest.

    4. Re:BULLSHIT! by zioncat · · Score: 2

      Android phones far outsell iPhones in Japan. See these charts as just one example http://kakaku.com/keitai/smart...

      kakaku.com is a price comparison site and its popularity ranking is based on page views and not sales. It is a testimony to iPhone's popularity in Japan that a product without a need for price comparison still rank that high on price comparison site's list. As for sales number, let's go to the people who actually studies and publish those kind of number:

      In Japan, consumers' desire for all things Apple continued into the final quarter of 2013, with iOS taking 68.7% share of smartphone sales.

    5. Re:BULLSHIT! by Lumpy · · Score: 3, Interesting

      And anything else will also be the same way. I have been trying to use the Ubuntu phone releases for 2 years now and they have the exact same problems that geeks hate on android and iphone. It also is a walled garden (Yes kids android IS a walled garden, go ahead and install a new hardware driver in your phone)

      Ubuntu phone suffers from a lot of the same problem because it is designed by a company looking for profits. not by a bunch of engineers and programmers that want to make something powerful and extendable.

      we will NEVER get a cellphone that is perfect for "geeks" not in the sense of a tiny pocket device. now if you instead think outside that box and think in the lines of a "deck" like in the game shadowrun or the TV show "almost human" that is your computer in a larger formfactor that you always have with you, then use a small display+audio device to use the cellular modem/board in the "deck". this means having to carry around essentially a 13" laptop everywhere (OH THE HORROR!) but it will allow someone the best of all worlds. their choice of OS, their choice of Software with full open protocols. you pick the cellular board (arduino type cellular board, someone out there has an LTE type that has a full open control, data, and audio channels) and interface it to your hardware.

      and honestly with some of the arduino high power quad core clones out there, it's possible to make it smallish. will it be a tiny paper thin thing? nope, but it will be better than anything your non techie friends will ever own.

      --
      Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
    6. Re:BULLSHIT! by Anubis+IV · · Score: 3, Informative

      Forbes disagrees that the number is "bullshit", though I doubt they'd agree with the 75% number being representative of the iPhone's current market share either, since they do agree with what you've said about the sales trends of iPhones. According to numbers from BCN (a group that measures Japanese smartphone market share on a weekly basis), the three-month rolling average for the period ending at the start of December last year was around 60% for the iPhone's market share, with a spike up above 75% for the first week of December. Apple had the first 9 out of the top 10 smartphones during that time, and 11 of the top 14.

      Of course, I'd be remiss if I didn't point out that iPhones historically do well at the holiday season compared to their competitors, and that, as you brought up, the release cycle for the iPhones also happens to correspond with the period being mentioned by Forbes. As such, I thought I'd dig a little, and if you look at the six months prior to that three-month window I just mentioned, iPhones had a 37% share of the market. Of course, that was mostly before they launched on DoCoMo, the nation's largest carrier, so it's likely that their average this year may see a boost compared to last.

      Long story short, yes, iPhones enjoyed a 75% market share in the Japanese smartphone market, but it was due to a combination of their release schedule and holiday sales, which makes the numbers legitimate, but misleading. It's likely that they are doing better than the 37% they had last year starting around this time, simply due to the greater availability of the device, but it's certainly not as high as it was during the holidays.

  2. How Steve Jobs got iPhone to Japan. Real story. by Luckyo · · Score: 3, Insightful

    The story was hilarious as it showed the sheer depth of incompetence at apple, and Jobs' utter inability to be flexible until reality hit him in the face several times over.

    When you think about it, the Japanese market is perfect to iphone's "style over substance" approach. That's how it always functioned, and now just with phones but with many consumer goods ranging from electronics to plush toys (which have a huge adult market in Japan!) Problem is, Japanese have some very specific requirements when it comes to their goods that are typically completely unique to Japan and do not exist outside that country. They need to be made suitable for them functionally and culturally, as they have a very different approach to many things from one we have here in the West.

    So initial foray was an unmitigated disaster. People returned early iphones back to stores in droves and the reason was utterly obvious - Jobs' idea for iphone was "same thing everywhere", and Japanese absolutely needed several significant adjustments to their phone, such as integration of certain Japan-centric services and input methods. The crash of iphone in market that everyone thought it would immediately take it by the storm actually got major players like Fujitsu say that Japanese market was so different, Western companies just don't stand the chance.

    Then someone at Apple hit Jobs with clue bat hard, "one approach for all markets" paradigm was buried for Japan and iphones sold in Japan were significantly adjusted to match expectations of Japanese public.

    Rest was history. While numbers are not quite as silly as this article suggests, Japan today has one of the highest iphone sales per capita in the world, because the general idea behind iphone, the "style over substance" approach is simply what Japanese market and mindset is all about. All it needed was understanding that no, your product is not perfect for all people everywhere and that some important adjustments for cultural differences and expectations are necessary.

    In many ways, it makes for a good extreme case study on how products, no matter how good they are, always need to be adjusted for sales in target area.

    1. Re:How Steve Jobs got iPhone to Japan. Real story. by Luckyo · · Score: 3, Informative

      To clarify - Japanese take the East-Asian concept of "face (cultural concept, not part of the head) over reality" to the extreme in everything, from their ties with other people to the products they buy to their conflicts with their neighbours.

      As a result, many things sold in Japan personify this particular aspect. Substance is certainly important to an extent, but style is absolutely necessary to get anything sold. Iphone nails the style and image concepts, and these alone will often sell your product in Japan as long as it's not completely awful otherwise. The extreme popularity of plush toys with adults in Japan and the fact that you must own the current, heavily advertised plush toy and not one that's a year old shows this well.

      All of these are essentially the same part of the "image and style is important, substance is optional as long as it meets bare minimum requirements" as those clearly visible in Apple products. There's a reason why macbooks have a backlit apple on the opposite side of the screen, or why apple fights so hard over "curved rectangles" in courts - it wants to be distinct as to reinforce the concept of "apple is more stylish and very distinct from competition".

      I'm not attempting to be condescending and simplistic. I'm merely pointing out that apple's design paradigm of "image and style first" align very well with Japanese culture.

    2. Re:How Steve Jobs got iPhone to Japan. Real story. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I'm not attempting to be condescending and simplistic. I'm merely pointing out that apple's design paradigm of "image and style first" align very well with Japanese culture.

      I think every single person of Apple's design team would vehemently disagree with the "'Image and style' first" idea. Steve Jobs said "Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works." Part of that is the physical layout as well as the software functionality. Certain things may be too subtle for most people to recognize (like the differences between Helvetica and Arial), but that doesn't mean they weren't thought about.

      Now you may disagree on how well the iPhone works for you, but I think it would be unfair to project your preferences onto the Apple iDevice phones and simply say they're only image conscious. Similarly many folks think that iDevice buyers only purchase things because of marketing (where in fact Samsung actually spends four times more marketing than Apple), and not because they think they're the least crappy thing out there (e.g., 90+ % of the mobile malware being on Android).

    3. Re:How Steve Jobs got iPhone to Japan. Real story. by AmiMoJo · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Sorry, that's rubbish. The Japanese value features in the electronics above all else. Their entire economy is built in consumers replacing perfectly good appliances with new ones just to get some new feature the old one didn't have. Even mundane stuff like rice cookers keep adding new things and you can pay over 100,000 yen for a top of the line model.

      When the iPhone first came out it did have a bit of an edge on features in some areas. The problem is that it was rapidly overtaken. There are a lot of Japan-only phones that it was competing with but which people in the west know nothing about. These days the lack of things like NFC is a big issue. Even stuff like the camera, traditionally an Apple strong point, is looking weak in the face of competition with optical stabilization.

      It is absolutely about substance and tangible features in Japan. Style is important too, but the Japanese actually research stuff before buying and specs matter. Just visit any bookshop and see the shear number of books on which smartphone to buy, and how they evaluate them.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
  3. and yet you can find graphs like this by glennrrr · · Score: 2

    http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-EZYE...
    So who is right?

    1. Re:and yet you can find graphs like this by Flytrap · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I think that the charts are depicting different things... the first is based on online votes (and we all know the kinds of people who flock to those), and the second is actual retail sales.

      Mobile network operators do not care which mobile phone brand you choose (save for the amount of subsidy each brand may require)... as long as you take it with a contract from them. In other words, they have little reason to lie about which smartphone brand their customers are choosing when they sign up for new contracts.

      I am more inclined to believe the CEOs of 3 different publicly listed companies who are fiercely competitive and have to answer to the scrutiny of shareholders and analysts, than some random web site running an unscientific online popularity contest.

  4. Re: Summary is wrong by Pikoro · · Score: 3, Informative

    the iphone is a non player here in japan. a good estimation based on what i see on the train is one in ten. the rest are a split between android and flip phones, which still offer more features than an iphone. things like saifu keitai, one seg, etc.. are considered necissary features here. the iphone just cannot compete.

    --
    "Freedom in the USA is not the ability to do what you want. It is the ability to stop others from doing what THEY want"
  5. 37% by fullback · · Score: 2

    That's the iPhone market percentage in Japan, but 8 out of the 10 most popular smartphones sold for the last four months are iPhones. So yes, the iPhone market share is increasing.

    Oh, and the "East-Asian concept of 'face'..." post above is utter nonsense. The real esoteric reason it's popular is because people just "like" it.

  6. How Steve Jobs got the iPhone into Japan by tommeke100 · · Score: 2

    He took one with him.

  7. Re:WTF is with the Japnese? Why such a high percen by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 2

    I kinda like some Japense perspectives. But... this chanegs everything.

    The Japanese have a very strong propensity to conform. So if your friends all have an iPhone, you need to get one too. They even do this when they decide to be a rebel. When I lived in Japan in the 1990s, all the "rebels" wore a plain white t-shirt with a pack of cigarettes rolled up in one sleeve, their hair greased back Elvis style, and they all hung out on a street corner in Harajuku. They all looked like clones of each other.

    American saying: The squeaky wheel gets the grease.
    Japanese saying: The nail that sticks up will be hammered back down.