Why the iPhone Has Failed in Japan
10:31 pm, February 26th, 2009, Lonnie Lazar
Image: sausurau
Japanese cell phone users are simply ahead of their time, according to a report at Wired, which counts the Apple smartphone’s relatively pedestrian toolset and a strong dose of cultural bias against non-Japanese brands to explain why Apple’s provider partner Softbank is now giving away 8GB iPhones to customers who sign a two year contract in the country where gadgets rule.
For example, while many Japanese are heavily into working and playing with video and photography on their cell phones, the iPhone has virtually no video support and a camera that could be described as eccentric, at best. In addition, many Japanese enjoy TV tuners built into their cell phones, while YouTube and the Ustream app can hardly be said to offer content with mass appeal.
Nokia and Motorola have also famously failed in Japan, so Apple is not without company, but in a country with extremely competitive cellular rate plans, Softbank’s monthly rates are seen as too high in comparison to others’ offerings.
It’s odd to think that in the US and in many parts of the rest of the world, where Apple sold over 10 million iPhones in 2008, the device is seen as a status symbol, even an indicator of too-much coolness, while in Japan, “carrying around an iPhone would make you look pretty lame.”
Posted by Lonnie Lazar in Opinions, iPhone | Comment on this article
If you enjoyed this article:
Subscribe via RSS or email, or follow us on Facebook and Twitter
I live in Japan… and I have an iPhone… and believe me it is hardly viewed as lame… everybody is very interested in it… take it out in a bar… and folks flock around to check it out.
Where the iPhone fails..
emoji – it only supports softbank emoji, other phones support emoji from all carriers.
oneseg tv – well you covered that.
wave2pay – no wave to pay, cant use the iphone to pay for things
barcode reader – cant read barcodes that are everywhere… like in a restaurant, japanese phones can read the barcode, download a coupon and then get a discount in the restaurants (just one example)
ordinary camera/no video – you covered that
tactile keyboard? I’m not sure if this is a problem or not.. nobody seems to have discussed it… but there is a learning curve to typing in japanese… not to mention cycling through the various keyboards can be quite troublesome. esp if you have 2 or 3 or even 4 active (english, emoji, japanese and chinese)
access to the proprietary web – each carrier has their own web services.. the iphone provides no support for these.. hence you are kind of cut of from your social circles
softbank – in a word softbanks SUCKS! their coverage is well below par and patchy… to be fair it has improved dramatically over the past years… but it still horrible. (I’ve had friends switch to softbank for the cheap call plans but switch back to their old carriers after only a few months of horrible coverage). If I switch back to a Japanese phone – this will be one major reason why.
The iPod Touch is doing really well.. I see them everywhere…. so I would suggest that people are staying with there phones and getting the full japanese phone experience and then they can use the iPod Touch for what it offers…
Kuma, on February 27th, 2009 at 12:19 am
Purely anecdotal… of the iPhone-using folk I know in Tokyo, not a single one is Japanese.
I don’t accept that Japanese consumers are averse to the iPhone out of loyalty to Japanese brands however. Take a train here and you’ll see tens of iPods of various flavours for every one Sony mp3 player.
I’d be more inclined to cite size, poor ergonomics and a wanting feature set for the iPhone’s failure to make a big impression in Japan.
Belengazi, on February 27th, 2009 at 5:05 am
I see more and more iPhones in the wild in Tokyo. Not just in the hands of foreigners, but in the hands of Japanese people as well. In spite of the fact that most iPhones cant record video (by most I mean UNjailbroken iPhones cannot) people still buy them. Not being able to record video is a very big deal because it is such a staple function of Japanese cell phones. Whenever I am out taking pictures with the iPhone, it always attracts attention of those around me, in a positive manner. People are interested, that is for sure. I can’t speak to the statistics, but people are definitely not ashamed of their iPhones here, and it doesn’t seem to be looked down upon by any Japanese people that I have spoken to about it.
Meetlegee, on February 27th, 2009 at 8:01 am
While the iPhone may have been successful during the early weeks of its launch, I do agree that in japan, the local mobile phone manufacturers still reign. Even the Blackberry which is marketed by DoCoMo, trails behind mobile makers such as Panasonic, Sharp, Casio, and Sony Ericcson. Common features like those mentioned in the article plus a few more like the Felica (mobile phone wallet) and media player offer consumers more ‘value’ for their money. Besides, i think many Japanese think that mobile phones should be ‘kawaii’ or cute. Different tastes for different folks.
Marwin, on February 27th, 2009 at 9:31 am
The writer for Wired doesn’t have a clue. The iPhone is generally not viewed as lame. That kind of nonsense makes me doubt everything I read in the news. But the iPhone hasn’t been as successful here yet as some other places. The first commenter had some good reasons why, i.e. emoji, and here are some others:
1. It is viewed as expensive – and compared to standard phones and plans it is expensive.
2. In Japanese, sentences can be built with fewer letters and fewer total key strokes so 1-thumb typing in Japanese on a numeric pad is actually, unlike English, very efficient. (If anybody doubts this go try as many keystroke counting tests as you like until you’re convinced). This means that Japanese people – especially women always holding bags – want to hold the phone in one hand and type with one thumb, but the iPhone is too big to do this. It’s an ergonomic problem.
3. Another problem early was related to the fact that Japanese is entered in kana only, then the word choices built with Kanji pop up on the screen and you select the correct one. In the early iterations of the iPhone OS there was a horrible lag time between the entering of kana and the word choice pop up. This means texting for early Japanese buyers was a horrible experience. It was fixed with an update about 2 or 3 months after launch.
4. Softbank has done a horrible job marketing the iPhone. Apple has come out with great ads echoing the US ads but only since December. For the first 6 months of launch there was nothing from Apple.
5. Content. You cannot buy TV shows or Movies on the Japanese iTunes store. This means people wanted to watch video on their phone have to be familiar with downloaded and file converting. Cult of Mac blog readers may think otherwise, but most people just don’t know how to do that in the US, let alone in Japan.
5. This may be the biggest reason of all. There is a huge misconception about Japan being technologically “advanced”. The more expensive phones have every function you can imagine, but they all run a crappy OS and have crappy screens and you can only view crippled mobile websites. In other words, functions are plenty but the implementation is horrible to mediocre at best. People use only the basic functions of their phones – the phone, texting (efficient on a traditional phone keypad and hugely popular), and the camera (no, cameras are not good), and crippled mobile sites (not websites but mobile sites on a carrier-specific platform). If you show a Japanese person what the iPhone is like to use and what it does – say google maps or downloading applications or playing great quality video or downloading movies and tv programs and watching them on your phone or just the flow of the touch screen menus and interface – their jaws will drop. The point is that in terms of software, in terms of both development and use, Japan is far far behind the US. In other words, the reason the iPhone hasn’t been a wild success here is the opposite of the reason given by Wired – in terms of software, Japanese developers and consumers are behind the times.
Joseph, on February 27th, 2009 at 10:26 am
The iPhone has 4 mags in Japan. A failure for sure (heavy sarcasm). See
the article at
http://www.iphonematters.com/article/the_japanese_hate_the_iphone_so_much_they_start_four_iphone_magazines_173/#When:12:42:00Z
Alan Smith, on February 27th, 2009 at 11:20 am
We have two Guitar apps for the iPhone, Guitar (acoustic) and iShred (electric), and both of them have a very strong following in Japan. The apps recently added a feature called AirPlay, which lets you listen to music from Guitar/iShred players around the world. A number of the top rated players are in Japan, including this awesome video:
http://frontierdesign.com/iShred/shredding
JerShred, on February 27th, 2009 at 4:52 pm