Apple’s iPhone: Japan will love it, Japan will buy it
Although I started out as somewhat of a skeptic about the iPhone, mainly in reaction to the blanket news coverage it has been receiving, reflecting on the situation I now consider that the iPhone has what it takes to be big in Japan; indeed to become the very first foreign mobile phone (Sony-Ericsson doesn’t countas foreign!) to be a success in Japan’s rather insular market. There are, however, a small number of additions and modifications that I propose Apple must make to the hardware, software, and design before they can consider selling it in Japan.
iPhone: Japan’s carriers
Looking at the market image of the three big mobile phone carriers, namely NTT DoCoMo, au by KDDI, and SoftBank, the most natural fit would be au, as according to many surveys they have the strongest image for being on the leading edge and for supporting music playback on their phones. However, if a bidding war starts, SoftBank may be prepared to lay the most cash on the table as they are most desparate for customers, and with Cameron Diaz and Bradd Pitt pushing an American image of talking on the phone for SoftBank, SoftBank’s president Masayoshi Son may see the iPhone as a natural extension of his brand. Therefore, I predict there will be a SoftBank iPhone on the shelves early next year.
iPhone: Japan needs 3G
It needs it in the US and in Europe too, so no more needs to be said about it. All Japanese carriers have stopped making new 2G models, so the iPhone must have 3G speeds to avoid being labeled as outdated.
iPhone: Japan needs a worse browser
Safari has been getting rave reviews in the USA, but the Japanese have been browsing for years in the walled garden of made-for-mobile web sites authored in C-HTML, Compact-HTML. There are too many existing services that are already designed for mobile phones for Apple to ignore, so they need to provide a downgraded browser that can support these sorts of sites without any fancy zooming or panning, just scrolling up and down.
iPhone: Japan needs emoji
Nearly three in four Japanese currently sprinkle some or all of their email with small colourful dingbat-like icons built into the phones from all of the major providers. The current methods of selecting these characters seriously needs a usability make-over that people look to Apple to implement, but without smilies, the average Japanese cell phone email would look naked and dull.
iPhone: Japan needs a retro keyboard
The biggest thing that the English-language iPhone seems to have got wrong is the keyboard. With Japanese, this style of keyboard will be even more problematic, and with many people as familiar, if not more familiar, with mobile-phone style keyboards as with traditional QWERTY ones, Apple should accept that as with the browser issues above, the older and more familiar methods of input need to be supported too. As with emoji above, I’m looking to Apple to sprinkle its magic pixie dust over the UI and the input prediction methods, but the underlying paradigm should be the standard 10-key method.
iPhone: Japan needs a strap hook
Almost everyone in Japan hangs some sort of mascot character on their phones, so without a mounting point for these straps, the iPhone will look very bare indeed. It’s just a very small thing, but it’s important and shows to potential consumers that Apple cares about Japan and Japanese sensibilities.
iPhone: Japan has it all already
A common theme running through various articles on the impending failure of the iPhone to penetrate the Japanese market is that all the features exist already in cell phones available in Japan today. While this point is indeed true and the raw feature set of the iPhone has little that is revoultionary, one need only look to Nintendo’s Wii and DS, which on paper are rather limited, or even in fact the iPod, which entered a Japanese market already crowded with offering from both domestic and overseas manufactures, yet still swempt them all away mostly on the strength of brand image and slickly integrated product. I believe the iPhone can help Apple make history repeat itself.
iPhone: Japan doesn’t need…
A recent survey showed that two requirements high in potential purchasers’ minds were One Seg digital terrestrial television and RFID-based electronic cash solutions. However, other surveys have shown that despite the fact that most new models support one or both of these features, the actual percentage of users accessing these features is rather limited. With YouTube support, One Seg television becomes less important, and many more people use traditional card-based electronic cash systems than use mobile phone-embedded FeliCa IC card chips.
Conclusion
Next year we will see a SoftBank Apple iPhone which while it may not replicate the roaring success of the iPhone in the USA or of the iPod in Japan, it will make a definite impact and change the face of the Japanese cell phone market. Up until now there has been perhaps just too cosy a relationship between the carriers and the manufacturers which while not stifling innovation, excluding physical design issues it has not encouraged manufacturers to be bold or different. Even if the iPhone itself never manages to gain a significant market share, its mere presence on the Japanese market can only benefit consumers.
Read more on: iphone,mobile phone,Opinion
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voice of reason said,
March 22, 2008 @ 08:30
the main proble the iphone has being send from the US to place it was ordered is that the phones use different technoloy and if the iphone were to change it would mean an new international model
Chris said,
March 25, 2008 @ 11:41
I have been using the iPod Touch email since it was patched… and typing in J. is nasty.
All the staff at the local Apple store agree … they hate it….
it may initially sell well.. but I can imagine punters switching back after playing with it for a few months…
Ken Y-N said,
March 25, 2008 @ 12:37
Chris, this weekend I played with an iPod Touch for the first time, and yes, that keyboard is awful! I have small fingers, but in portrait mode my error rate was very high, and the bar along the top with the predictive plus henkan options just didn’t work for me.
I really believe the most important feature Apple need to add is a retro keypad kana mode, followed very closely by emoji emoticons.
I must check Japanese blogs to see what they are saying about the Touch’s input.
The Apple iPhone: Successes and Challenges for the Mobile Industry »世論 What Japan Thinks said,
April 2, 2008 @ 23:26
[…] This survey teaches a lot about the American consumer’s relationship with their iPhone, but it also serves to highlight the differences between them and the Japanese consumer. With the tiny Japanese smartphone market, and given the usage patterns reported in this survey, the iPhone as is will be a hard sell in the Japanese market and Apple can expect to sell it in the thousands or tens of thousands, not their hoped-for millions, if it is launched as-is without the essential additional functionality. […]
bob said,
May 14, 2008 @ 09:52
Japanese phones used to be the envy of the world, but the big players have spent the past 5 years falling over each other trying to attract customers, and didn’t pay any attention to what is on the inside of the phones, and put all their energy into the outside. Today’s phone is nothing but a repackaged versions of the same phone that was around 5 years ago. Meanwhile the rest of the world moved forward.
I disagree that Japanese need a strap or a lot of the other things people deem as “missing”. The iphone won’t appeal to everybody. Your average Harajuku teenybopper would never give up her pink, diamond studded, fuffed-out clamshell for an iPhone. But there are plenty of people who will go for the sleek design and UI and wouldn’t dream about attaching anything to it. And they will embrace the UI and work with it. After all, isn’t that what the iPhone is all about. Moving forward in the way we interact with technology and opening the doors for new and exciting things in the future. It think we’ve only seen the beginning of what is to come, and if Japanese decide not to embrace the iPhone or similar technologies, they’ll be left behind and miss out on what the future has in store. They’ve already got some catching up to do.
Christopher Billich said,
June 4, 2008 @ 16:23
Seems like Softbank Mobile beat DoCoMo to it:
http://www.infinita.co.jp/en/cast/billich/2008/06/3g_iphone_to_launch_on_softban.html
Ken Y-N said,
June 4, 2008 @ 17:06
Christopher, I realised something must be afoot as I have had a minor explosion of searches for “softbank iphone” and other variants.
Just to gloat, I was predicting that all along; I wonder if they’ll have a retro-browser for keitai sites? They’re doing a retro numeric keyboard in the new iPhone firmware, according to some screenshots I saw.
macnmm said,
June 5, 2008 @ 09:36
I just bought a KDDI au phone, and the reasons were
1) waterproof
3G speeds allow for net access on the train with little waiting
2) Has navigation and GPS programs for walking and driving
3) Can find other phones with GPS and put them on a map
4) 2-touch typing and ATOK ime predictive input
5) one-seg TV
6) cute characters animate in screen saver and menu screens
7) runs Adobe Flash and downloadable programs
9) FeLiCa touch-buying and message sending
10) IR data transfer to other phones
11) music service lets me hum first few bars of song I want to find
12) OCR engine allows me to take snapshot of Japanese text and look up in dictionary or put in email
13) 5.1 MP camera with image stabilization and sharpening
14) strap to yank out of pocket when it rings, or hold when running to train
15) up to 32 GB of storage in microSD
16) If I get phone call while watching TV, it automatically starts taping the show so I can watch it in tape-delay mode without missing a thing when I hang up
17) I can answer the phone after the voicemail has picked up and can screen calls
There is more, of course.
The thing iPhone has that no phone in Japan has yet is a far superior web browsing experience. That alone might help it win. However, just because text web is sucky doesn’t mean there isn’t a lot of infrastructure built up around it that keep people locked in. Speed while using the iPhone on the 3G network better be as fast as its text-based cousins, or no one will switch.
macnmm said,
June 5, 2008 @ 09:40
Oh! I forgot the main thing I was going to say –
I got an au phone because even though SoftBank is the cheapest carrier and pretty much the “hippest” in terms of its young customer base, the coverage is TERRIBLE. People I talked to who have SoftBank told me to watch out and that they can’t get service from their own homes in the ‘burbs.
au has the best phones, and is popular among foreigners and all the designers I know. Apple should have tried harder to partner with them. Ah, well.
Ken Y-N said,
June 5, 2008 @ 10:05
macnmm, sounds nice! Mind telling me which model and how much as I’m considering jumping ship from DoCoMo (or is that docomo now) as they are flogging all their phones for 50,000 yen a go. I like the sound of the auto-recording of shows, although I still worry about battery life when it comes to One Seg.
I think the stuff about SoftBank/Borderphone coverage is a relic from when they were Vodaphone/J-Phone, as apparently in the last couple of years they have heavily upgraded their network.
macnmm said,
June 5, 2008 @ 13:22
Yeah mine was free with a two year contract. Check them out — au.kddi.com
Durf.org said,
June 5, 2008 @ 14:08
SoftBank iPhone: confirmed…
I was just pointed to this SoftBank press release from today. I quote:
SOFTBANK MOBILE Corp. today announced it has signed an agreement with Apple® to bring the iPhone™ to Japan later this year.
(Seriously, that’s the entire press release; yo…
Durf said,
June 5, 2008 @ 14:11
Do you have a link to the 10-key screenies you say you saw? Would like to see some more visual info on this thing.
I’m a DoCoMoPerson now too, and the new models are pricy but you get lower monthly rates over the year or two of your plan if you play along, according to the calculations I’ve seen. I was worried for a bit because DoCoMo announced its first wifi-ready model complete with an additional ¥1,000 per month fee for connecting to NTT services via 802.11 . . . I saw it as a hint of impending iPhone surcharges and a sign of doom. Now the only doom I face is deciding whether to jump ship and pay the MNP fee to get a SoftBank iPhone instead.
» Blog Archive » Apple seals iPhone deal with Softbank said,
June 5, 2008 @ 17:20
[…] to the What Japan Thinks blog: “While the [Japanese iPhone] may not replicate the roaring success of the iPhone in the USA […]
Ken Y-N said,
June 7, 2008 @ 23:36
Hi Durf, here’s where I saw the 10-key screenshots:
http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=479920
It looks quite nice, although I’m not sure how well taking サカア as input and matching anything from サシスセソザジズゼゾ・カキクケコガギグゲゴ・アイウエオ will work. The list of conversions isn’t even sorted by frequency of use, although it is of course beta.
Christopher Billich said,
June 9, 2008 @ 15:57
@macnmm
Absolutely agree that there are tons of cool features in Japanese phones that the iPhone 2.0 will not have, and also agree that at the same time superior browsing experience may actually matter more to people than all those nifty bells and whistles.
Regarding Apple partnering with au for the iPhone, that has always been out of the question, simply because the iPhone is a device on the GSM/GPRS/W-CDMA network standard evolution path. Making it run it on au’s network would have required producing a CDMA1x/EV-DO version of it, which would in no way make sense in terms of scale since only less than 15% of the world’s mobile subscribers are on CDMA1x operators.
Durf said,
June 9, 2008 @ 16:12
Oog, those screenshots look atrocious from the perspective of actually inputting text. Why would they not license whatever text input methods SoftBank uses and port them to the iPhone OS? To do otherwise would be to reinvent the wheel.
Hugo said,
June 14, 2008 @ 21:50
The iphone does not have to bring it all what is mention up there in the list, and if you really miss it you can buy it soon at the app store. the missing retro keyboard, emoji might be already included. It has a chance to be an other portable playstation, but this this time from apple. Mickey can also show on iphone, since Japan loves Mickey and Steve has a strong stand in Disney. Music, Movie, Video, GPS, and more. Forget about TV you might get an add-on from a third party. The strap is the biggest set back - but even there you can find a quick solution, get a case. LoL
All over iphone has a chance to make it in Japan, might not make it big, but it has a chance to stay for a time and who knows in a year from now. The iphone is cheep enough to be fine as a new toy until the next new gadget is out, but by that time Steve got his sales and Softbank got its new customers and all foreigners there iphone…. LoL
punky said,
July 7, 2008 @ 18:12
softbank will release iphones this coming july at omotesando..
Mark said,
August 1, 2008 @ 16:08
HARD FOR ME TO BUY THIS:
Here are some reasons why:
1. No IC CARD SYSTEM:
I currently have SUICA and EDY on my keitai and it’s just super convenient and great. Pay for taxis, trains, convenient stores, bus transportation, gas, and a whole slew of other things!
For me, if IPhone doesn’t have it, it will be hard for me to rationalize the switch.
2. No 1seg TV
My current phone has it. Sure, Iphone has YouTube and other stuff, but it’s nice sometimes just to watch Japanese Television.
For me, this isn’t so important, but it’s a nice thing to have that many Japanese phones have now-a-days, and with the typical long commutes to work in Japan, this is just one of the things to keep you occupied (for the Japanese Salaryman or anyone Japanese for that matter).
3. No Memory Expansion/Removable Media
Current phone has it.
It would be nice to have something like MicroSD cards for the IPhone, at least to provide some more memory expansion, and ease of removale if one so wishes.
4. No Kaomoji (Facemarks for Text Messaging)
Most everyone I know loves to use this in their messages. The ability to do this in mails is extremely popular in Japan. Young people are especially keen on this.
If IPhone doesn’t have a comparible system, this will certainly be a limiting factor.
5. Poor Camera Quality
2.0 mp? Pfft. Many phones now in Japan are around 3.0 or moving rapidly to 5.0 in quality. To me there’s not point in carrying around and using a 2.0mp camera on the IPhone, especially when there are 5.0 models commonly around now. That’s just me, however I think the more and more camera quality inreases in phones, the more and more 2.0 is going to stick out as a weak point.
These are the primary reasons for me. Sure, there are great things about the IPhone, yet for the Japanese Market, I don’t have so much confidence. I’ll go look at the IPhone, though I really doubt I’m going to bite.. I’ll probably wait for a new model and hope Apple becomes more ‘Market Sensative’.
Kevin said,
August 9, 2008 @ 01:20
The fact of the matter is that the iPhone is little more than a slick PDA, so it takes more than geek-impressing features to make the rest of us adopt it. While tech people like me love to see web pages bounce around and zoom, for everyone else they want to know what they really get to make it worth the bulk, expense, contract terms, etc.
And the answer for most people is ‘I don’t really get that much to make it worth it’. So the niche market will continue, as it has since iPaq, Palm, XDA, days.