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Why the iPhone is not popular in Japan
February 27, 2009 | 6:52 pm
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By Chris Meadows
Japan has gained a reputation as the land of the cell phone. The adoption and use of cells in Japan seems to be several years ahead of phone use in the west, and it has become an integral part of their culture.
For example, one season of the long-running Kamen (Masked) Rider series, Kamen Rider 555 (pictured at left) used special cell phones to transform ordinary teenagers into armored warriors—and the cell phone pen-pal relationship unknowingly carried on between two other characters was an important dramatic element of the series.
In that light, it seems strange that the iPhone—one of the most advanced smartphones America has to offer—is so unpopular in Japan that the cell phone company is literally having to give it away with phone plans. But Wired’s “Gadget Lab” blog makes sense of it: by Japanese standards, the iPhone is not advanced enough.
Although most Japanese cell phones do not transform their users into armored warriors (yet), they do practically everything else. TV tuners, full-motion video, and multimedia text messaging are all features the Japanese are used to having in their phones, but are not available with the iPhone. The iPhone’s data plans cost more than other phones’, and it also suffers from the stigma of being American, not Japanese.
Another problem is that many Japanese have no personal computer, and use a cell phone as their only computing device, using it to send and receive e-mail (as did those pen-pals from Kamen Rider). The iPhone, on the other hand, requires a computer with iTunes for syncing and firmware updates.
I have long been fascinated by Japanese culture, especially in the ways it might seem counter-intuitive to westerners. Japan is widely considered very fond of gadgets—but as the adoption problems of the iPhone and the Sony Librié (as mentioned yesterday) show, the popularity of a “gadget” can be affected by a number of unexpected factors.
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Comments:
Thanks for the post, Chris.
I last lived in Japan in 2002; at that time on my cellphone, which was pretty primitive, I could send email, read newspapers, chat, post on bulletin boards, join clubs, receive news and sports updates, and listen to music. And this was a phone that people would make fun of when I pulled out, because it was so laughably out of date.
So it doesn’t surprise me that the iPhone isn’t a hit in Japan. To them it’s already an antique.
I knew this was wrong when I read it, as I live in Japan and I have seen that the iPhone is definitely NOT unpopular. Now I have been proven right:
“A report intending to portray the iPhone as “hated” in the Japanese market turns out to have been built upon fake quotations from industry writers and observers who were misrepresented by remarks attributed to them that they never made. Their actual comments on the iPhone’s prospects in Japan are far more interesting.”
(http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/09/02/28/japanese_hate_for_iphone_all_a_big_mistake.html)
Don’t think I’m defending Apple because I’m one of their ecstatic fans. I’m not. I hate Apple. I’m a PC guy. I have a 120GB Zune and a 60GB Zen Vision: M for portable music and video. The only Apple product I own is an iPod Touch, which I bought for the specific purpose of being able to put e-books in my pocket for the occasions I’m without my Kindle. That alone should tell you something. Apple has made a great multi-purpose device. Personally, I can’t wait to get back to the states so I can buy an Android phone because it’s open source model seems so much more promising than Apple’s closed environment. Regardless, iPhones and iPod Touches are pretty much the modern PDA and I’m sure they are popular wherever they are sold. I looked into getting an iPhone here but Softbank’s pricing plan is ridiculous. I’d have to pay at least twice as much for the phone itself than I would in the states. That is probably the only thing hurting Apple right now. There are so many good cell phone companies over here already with the advantage of not having the high shipping and import costs. It’s not that they’re better phones, they’re just just not bad phones and they do a lot.
The only popular feature I’ve seen on the phones here that hasn’t really caught on in the states is the TV reception. But with the rise of online video, this feature isn’t going to be worth much. Things will really change when sites like Hulu go mobile.
To get back on the topic of this blog, though, Japanese do a lot of reading on their phones in a variety of formats. I think Japan has definitely had much more innovation in this department than the states. Especially in the arena of putting comics on phones. Cheap paper books are also pretty popular in Japan, though. Not a whole lot is cheap in Japan but I think they do publishing right. You can pick up a large weekly magazine of manga (several stories, very thick) for ¥500-600 (right now about $5.15-6.18). They have a lot of other literature that is the same way. They use really cheap paper and binding. Nothing like you’d expect to see in a U.S. bookstore. I think U.S. publishers treat books like a niche market, to their detriment. Books of all types–digital and printed–are far more expensive than they should be.
Yeah, I saw that article last night but was too tired to write anything about it. I guess that’ll teach me to trust anything Wired says.
Yes I agree the iphone 3G is crap and I cant unerstand what the facination is withem even the latest 3Gs is crap it doent have half the features my 7 year old SONY K750i had and that was only 2.5g
Apples apps store is just and avertising for expensive and ussless apps if your in to the reall world of fun and work, who need a program to tell you when your girlfriends period is and what if I have more than one girl friend hell what am I going to do O year Ill call her and ask!
Thank god the Japanese have more brains than all the rest of the suckers – mine was free as part of a work contract, Im gong to get a real phone ASAP