With Apple’s iPhone launching soon in Japan, and a lot of hot air in the blogs and press on why the iPhone will or won’t be a hit in Japan, it’s time to take a look at the aspects of Apple’s iPhone. It’s a flop in Japan, the country where multi-function and multi-function cell phones are the norm, and it’s not unusual to pay the equivalent of $ 500 per phone.
1. Operators will kill Apple’s iPhone in Japan. The Japanese market is littered with corpses of damaged foreign mobiles. Motorola’s smartphone is relegated to the back pages of catalogs and the Blackberry is not even offered as a consumer device. Nokia has had limited success (or at least not outright failure) with SoftBank, but the Razr barely made an impact with DoCoMo, and they didn’t even bother. Apple’s iPhone will enter the Japanese market in this shadow of death, and Apple’s insistence on making a deal on its own terms will cause carriers to favor more flexible Japanese manufacturers.
2. His strangeness will end Apple’s iPhone in Japan. As noted above, foreign phones come to Japan to die. From a consumer point of view, Apple’s iPhone will have to show that it understands the Japanese consumer, a consumer who likes the way their current phones work, who is used to a number pad and who can even be attribute an alphanumeric entry. a novelty, since the penetration of computers, not only at home but also at work, is quite low. Does Apple’s iPhone Really Understand the Japanese Mobile Phone Consumer?
3. Nearly non-existent public Wi-Fi will kill Apple’s iPhone in Japan. One great thing about the iPhone is the perfect switch from WiFi networks to mobile networks. However, in Japan, public hotspots are a rarity, and the only option is often to steal from a private individual’s misconfigured home router. Most coffee shops and train stations are down for wireless technology, so the Japanese iPhone user will be trapped on the slower and more expensive 3G network.
4. The keyboard will kill Apple’s iPhone in Japan. As stated above, almost all Japanese are intimately familiar with operating the keyboard on their mobile phone, while few are regular keyboard users. Not only that, but Japanese keyboards, instead of using the western alphabet-based system (a key rotates via ABCabc, etc.), uses kana-based syllabic input, so the keys rotate via KA-KI-KU-KE-KO, for example). Japanese iPhone users will need to be able to type with one hand dangling from a strap on a moving train, a task that the current iPhone keyboard just doesn’t measure up to.
5. No strap eyelet will kill the Apple iPhone in Japan. True, this is a bit silly, but it’s the little things that can make a difference and illustrate that Steve Jobs understands the Japanese market. One way the Japanese express their individuality is to decorate their cell phone with straps; lovable characters, screen cleaners, branded straps; Japanese of all ages will want to do the same with their iPhone, and with no grommet on the current model, Apple denies them this option.
Given these aforementioned factors, it’s no wonder that Apple’s iPhone in Japan is destined not to be as successful as it was in the United States.