Apple Pay made its debut in Japan today, although it didn’t completely get off to the best start.
The reason? One of the most eagerly-anticipated selling points of the service — the ability to use it on the subway — didn’t work properly. While East Japan Railway Co. says things were fixed within a few hours, the rush hour outage has made some users worried about future system stability.
iPhone 7 Plus owners can finally start using Apple’s highly-touted Portrait Mode starting today.
Apple released iOS 10.1 to the public this morning after weeks of beta testing the new Portrait Mode. The software update comes with a couple of other tweaks for iPhone and iPad as well as a number of bug fixes.
Apple’s new R&D base in Yokohama, Japan, will focus on artificial intelligence and other related technologies, Tim Cook has revealed.
The new facility is set to be completed by December, well ahead of the projected date of March 2017. In an interview with Nikkei Asian Review, Cook called it a center for “deep engineering,” and said it will be “very different” from the R&D centers Apple plans to build in China.
Apple CEO Tim Cook made a pit stop Friday at the office of Japan’s prime minister to talk about Apple’s growth in the country.
Cook told Prime Minister Shinzo Abe that Apple’s new R&D facility in Yokohama will be completed by December, well ahead of the projected date of March 2017. Apple says it hopes the new R&D facility near Tokyo will help it forge more local partnerships to source parts for future Apple products.
Foxconn, a company Apple heavily relies upon for iPhone production, plans to start selling its own smartphones in Japan.
It’s a bold move into one of Apple’s hottest markets by the Taiwanese electronics company, which employs around 1.3 million people and 40,000 robots.
Apple is planning to adopt a new tap-to-pay standard that will be integrated into future iPhones specifically for customers in Japan, according to a new report. The FeliCa standard, originally developed by Sony, will allow users to store public bus and train passes in Apple Wallet.
It’s no secret that Japan is a big fan of Steve Jobs, which goes some way to explaining why Apple’s late co-founder is being used as a (pretty tenuous) connection to help reinvigorate interest in the country’s Buddhist Zen tourism trade.
How? Because, as it turns out, the 13th century Eiheiji temple Japanese local authorities hope to drum up interest in happens to be the same place which trained Kobun Chino Otogawa, a.k.a. Jobs’ spiritual advisor and wedding officiator.
We warned you it was tenuous!
The Japanese Apple Store in Tokyo’s upmarket Ginza district had to be evacuated and a promotional event canceled over the weekend after it received a bomb threat.
Now if Cupertino really wanted to make Siri something special, they would give her a head, arms and legs, and make her dance when she plays music.
Sharp Electronics has either jumped ahead of Apple or jumped the shark tank with an animated robotic smartphone called RoBoHon. It does everything your current smartphone does but with moving appendages, an adorable, futuristic face and a sweet voice to make it a very personable sidekick.
Apple has praised the iPhone 6s for selling a record-shattering 13 million units in its first three days. However, a new report suggests that in Japan the 6s and 6s Plus actually sold 10-15 percent fewer units than last year’s iPhone 6.
How can both of these reported facts (record-breaking sales figures and lower demand) be true at the same time? There is an answer — and, no, it’s not Schrödinger’s iPhone.
Apple’s upcoming R&D center in Yokohama will allow the company to tap into the materials, vehicles and health expertise that exists in Japan, according to a new report.
The R&D facility — which will be Apple’s biggest in Asia — will join similar offices in the U.K., China and Israel.
Being an Apple manufacturer is a pretty lucrative market if you can get in on it, which is why it’s no surprise to hear that Apple’s existing partners are constantly fending off challenges from upstarts promising to do whatever they can do — only cheaper and better.
According to a new report, Japanese manufacturers are currently making a concerted effort to secure more orders from Apple, which currently deals mainly with companies based in Taiwan and China.
If the Japan-based companies do manage to muscle-in on the Apple supply chain, it could result in iPhone manufacturing becoming even more of an international affair than it already is, while also having a potentially massive impact on existing Chinese iPhone makers.
Apple is teaming with IBM and Japan Post on a pilot scheme that will hand up to 5 million iPads out to elderly people in Japan by 2020, to help them keep in touch with their families, physicians and community.
In addition to existing iPad apps like FaceTime and Messages, the tablets will come loaded with custom IBM apps designed to help remind senior citizens to take their medication, exercise regularly, and maintain a healthy diet, while also allowing direct access to community support services such as grocery shopping.
Attack on Titan, the cult-hit in ink (manga) and on the small screen (anime), is getting a live-action treatment this summer. The good news is that the feature film is hitting Japan on August 1 and Australia and New Zealand later this same year. The bad news is that we have no details on a U.S. release, though both the manga and anime are still available in this country.
The film is the first of two planned parts, with the second flick, Attack on Titan: End of the World, headed to Japan this coming September.
Apple’s spaceship-style Campus 2 isn’t the only impressive Apple building on the horizon. The first render for the company’s giant R&D center in Yokohama, Japan, is out — and it looks spectacular!
BERKELEY, Calif. — ILE is big in Japan. The California bag company has found a market with the Japanese bike website Blue Lug, and the collaboration keeps pushing ILE into new bags, materials, hardware and color choices.
Eric Fischer, 26, launched ILE (short for “Inside Line Equipment”) out of his apartment four short years ago. He was racing bikes, buying fabric and making bags one at a time for himself, his friends and friends of friends.
“I always liked making things, but building buildings didn’t seem scalable,” Fischer told Cult of Mac. “Making bags seemed more like a painting rather than building a house.”
Considering that the Apple Watch goes on sale in a little over one month, Apple has still provided relatively few details about how exactly it’s going to be selling its upscale wearable devices.
Some images posted by Japanese Apple blog Macotakara offer a few hints, however. The photos show an Apple Watch booth or mini-store at the upmarket Isetan department store in Shinjuku, Tokyo. The sign reads “WATCH: Coming Soon.”
Energy gels are so 2014. When it comes to winning races, modern marathon runners need a robot that straps to their back and force-feeds them tomatoes.
Luckily, Japan has already delivered this technological wonder. Wait till you see it in action!
The iPhone has been killing it in Japan lately. Apple’s smartphone marketshare in the tech-obsessed country is continuing to dominate year-over-year, even though the company had a hard time giving out iPhones just five years ago.
With the iPhone 6’s bigger screen, the company is making more of an inroads than ever, but according to a report from Reuters, smartphones in Japan are facing stiff from competition from an unlikely suspect: flip-phones.
Things aren’t looking too rosy for Samsung at the moment. Having seen profits slip due to its falling mobile sales, the flailing South Korean tech giant is reportedly considering throwing in the towel altogether in Japan, where it’s struggling more than elsewhere.
Samsung currently represents a miniscule 4 percent of the Japanese smartphone market, which puts it in sixth place. According to sources with Samsung, staying in Japan is actually losing rather than gaining the company money.
While Samsung hasn’t traditionally been a top-seller in Japan, here in 2015 it’s doing worse than ever: with the company’s favorite metric, marketshare, shrinking from 17 percent two years ago to low single digits today.
How much would you endure to get a cheap deal on a new Apple product?
When we wrote about the traditional Japanese “Lucky Bag” special offer — which gives customers the chance to buy a $300 gift bag, containing cut-price luxuries like MacBook Airs and Apple TVs — many U.S.-based Cult of Mac readers complained that they weren’t given similar promotions.
I saw their point — at least until I glimpsed something much worse: photos showing the freezing Apple fans in question, lined up outside the Sapporo, Japan Apple Store on January 1.
You know that moment when an otherwise fun special offer turns into the last scene of The Shining (spoilers!)? This is it.
As per Japanese tradition, Apple has started handing out its Fukubukuro (a.k.a. “Lucky Bags”) to customers at its brick-and-mortar retail stores in Japan — giving some fortunate buyers massive discounts on the latest Apple products and accessories.
The bags are part of a special New Year offer, and are available in only limited quantities, with customers not knowing which they’re going to get until they’ve stumped up their ¥36,000 (around $300).
Check out the bag’s contents (as well as how you can get your hands on one, even if you don’t live in Japan!) after the jump:
Christmas may be over here in the United States, but the season’s just starting in Japan. Apple has just announced that it will kick off its annual “Lucky Bag” celebration in its Japanese retail stores starting January 2.
Apple is planning to open a massive new research and development center in Japan, according to local media, which were told about the plans by the country’s Prime Minister Abe Shinzo.
It was once thought that Japan disliked the iPhone so much that the Apple device couldn’t be given away for free. To paraphrase Dinah Washington, what a difference five years makes!
In October, the iPhone 6 held seven of the top eight smartphone positions (and nine out of the top 14). While sales figures are lacking, the data indicates the strength of the iPhone in Japan, according to a new report from Forbes.