Over at wired dot com there is a post about why the iphone is not popular in Japan. They quote a lot of people and the bottom line is, Japan is different, more advanced and does not like old stuff, especially in mobile technology….
Well, I think it is a bit on the hype side. Yes it is true, the iPhone is not a huge success in Japan and the expectation from Apple and Softbank have been to high. The phone really has some serious short comings and it would have been nice if some current “standards” would have been included or added by now.
You have to keep two things apart, the hardware and the software.
The hardware has some shortcomings. The camera and the TV function are on top, followed by the missing build in electronic wallet.
On the software. The iphone has a touch screen and it need some time to get used to it, especially when used to the small number enter buttons. But people mastered these number buttons so well, they are super fast typing. Re-learning this only to use a touch screen phone, well you need to have the right motivation.
Since the launch, iphone improved on the software side, it got the missing icons for texting. Still it has lots of small short comings and it sums up to be a little set back.
Compared with other models in Japan the camera is extreme poor in its function. It would be nice if it would have a better software to do all the little picture manipulations you can do with other phones. The pixels are low on the iphone, but some japanese models have similar pixels. Still the iphone camera is a big set back, can not even take a good sharp closeup picture.
Okay, the iphone camera is on the back side, make it very difficult to take picture pointing to oneself, something people love to do. But the missing strap holder on the phone is really the biggest set back. It would have been so nice, if Apple would have allowed a little metal dent to hang all the must have mobile phone straps.
For some TV and electronic wallet are important and it would have been nice if the iphone had it. I understand it would have been very difficult to add and the battery would have had serious problems, but it is an almost must have, especially for people who are on the run and hardly home.
Price? You are joking, the price plan is identical with the price plan for other data models. The phone comes even with an unlimited data plan, that has a fixed minimum and maximum price. There is no difference. See Softbank for detailed information.
In Japan people have several mobile phones, compared with them the iphone stands out in size, but still is good to handle. It has the biggest screen size of all mobile phones. Apple might have better chances if it adapts to the width of the japanese model, but that is only a guess.
What people tend to forget is that the iphone send a shockwave through the mobile industry in Japan. No one really likes to talk about it, but for the mobile industry it was a shock and eye opener. Today the newer japanese models have taken or shall I say “copied” some function, feel or look from the iphone. One of the new au models can make music, it has a build in yamaha piano keyboard – something that the iphone had from the very first day….
As the iphone was not a perfect fit for the Japanese and still is not, it had a greater impact then the sales at Softbank show. As the new japanese mobile phones take hadware and software functions from the iphone, it is time for iphone to take some function and hardware to make it a little more japanese or shall I say asian….
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