Useless Survey: 91% of Japanese Will Not Buy 'iPhone'

[MacRumors]

Making the rounds today is a rather useless survey which claims that 91% of Japanese will not buy the 'iPhone'. While I may have a personal bias against online surveys and their overreaching conclusions, this one is particularly unhelpful.

Much of the online press are describing this as a negative story, suggesting that 91% of the Japanese not being interested in the iPhone is a disappointing statistic. AlleyInsider spins it perhaps slightly more appropriately, reporting that an impressive 9% of all Japanese are going to buy an iPhone. 9% of the Japanese population represents 11 million people, suggesting that Japan alone could be responsible for Apple's 10 million target mark this year.

Of course, neither conclusion is valid since it's not clear from the report how participants had been selected, making it impossible to generalize to the entire Japanese population.

Another disappointing aspect of the survey is that it was conducted before the iPhone 3G was officially announced, which means answers were based on knowledge and pricing of the original iPhone which has never been available for sale in Japan.

That being said, it's not a foregone conclusion that the iPhone will see success in Japan. Wired explored the dramatically different market mobile market found in Japan:

Japan is a culture of spec sheets. When consumers go to electronics stores to buy a cellphone, they frequently line up the specifications side by side to compare them before deciding which one to buy.

Though, it appears that many customers only use a very small percentage of features in their mobile phones in Japan. It remains to be seen if the interface and relative simplicity of the iPhone will be able to gain marketshare in Japan.

Article Link

[bloodycape]

My understanding is many Japanese people prefer if their device has some sort of DMB or 1SEG TV option as that is like a huge thing there. After all Sony, Toshiba and others offers mp3 and cellphones exclusively for their home markets with 1Seg TV option. But, I could be totally off.

[dfnj123]

I would like to see this data redone now

[BornAgainMac]

I am curious how other Japanese phones handle their advanced language characters? Seems like the iPhone will handle it.

[mavis]

I think 9% is a huge number, I'm sure Apple (or any company!) would love to see that kind of penetration in every market ...

I doubt we'll see that here, but so far there has been massive interest in the iPhone - Softbank's call center is getting swamped with information requests, shops that started accepting pre-orders are seeing huge numbers of people signing up on waiting lists, and the iPhone has been in the news (TV, newspaper) regularly since it was announced. Comparisons to other, high-end Japanese phones have been overwhelmingly positive (in favor of the iPhone) based not only on price, but user interface and 'coolness' ...

The iPhone is going to be huge here. I can't wait!!

[Willis]

this will be interesting to see pan out... 9% = ~11M people... thats an awful lot of people. And because that was prior to the lower price points, I'll put money on it being an even higher percentage.

[GutBomb]

Originally Posted by the article

Targeting Internet users aged primarily 20 to 49, iSHARE asked questions about their intention to purchase an iPhone, as well as other questions and received 402 responses over the Internet.

Did anyone actually read the article?

It's not 9% of all of japan planning to buy an iphone. It's 9% of people who choose to answer a poll about cell phones that plan to buy an iphone. And they only polled 402 people.

So congrats. 40 people plan to buy the iphone in japan.

statistics are fun. (and useless)

The fact that they could only get 402 responses to an internet forum targeting internet users aged 18-49 says to me that the interest in the iphone is very low, and what interest there is, is pretty negative.

[Decrepit]

Yes, our technology is seriously behind that of the Japanese.

The density of their population has allowed certain technologies to be adopted quickly.

If Japanese or Korean companies had to offer the capabilities they offer now, but across the width of North America, things would have moved more slowly.

[pgifford]

Originally Posted by GutBomb

Did anyone actually read the article?

It's not 9% of all of japan planning to buy an iphone. It's 9% of people who choose to answer a poll about cell phones that plan to buy an iphone. And they only polled 402 people.

So congrats. 40 people plan to buy the iphone in japan.

statistics are fun. (and useless)

I don't think you understand how polls and statistics work. Obviously they can't poll everyone in Japan. They can extrapolate results within a certain margin of error from a sampling of the population - the more people they poll, the smaller the margin of error. How do you think they come up with results from other polls like the president's popularity ratings? Nobody I know has ever been asked if they approve or disapprove of the president, yet they can say that 70 percent of Americans disapprove of him.

[GutBomb]

Originally Posted by pgifford

I don't think you understand how polls and statistics work. Obviously they can't poll everyone in Japan. They can extrapolate results within a certain margin of error from a sampling of the population - the more people they poll, the smaller the margin of error. How do you think they come up with results from other polls like the president's popularity ratings? Nobody I know has ever been asked if they approve or disapprove of the president, yet they can say that 70 percent of Americans disapprove of him.

I understand fine. My point was that 402 people that have enough of an interest in cell phones to respond to a poll about them is not a sufficient sample size to say what japan wants or not. The statistics are completely useless. To equate 9% of responses to a poll that 402 people responded to to 11 million people is ludicrous.

I said 40 people to point out the ridiculousness of people wetting themselves about 11 million iphone sales in japan. I know full well it's going to fall somewhere in between 40 and 11 million, but i am pretty damn sure it's gonna be a lot closer to 40 than 11 million.

[pgifford]

Originally Posted by GutBomb

I understand fine. My point was that 402 people is not a sufficient sample size to say what japan wants or not. The statistics are completely useless. To equate 9% of responses to a poll that 402 people responded to to 11 million people is ludicrous.

I said 40 people to point out the ridiculousness of people wetting themselves about 11 million iphone sales in japan. I know full well it's going to fall somewhere in between 40 and 11 million, but i am pretty damn sure it's gonna be a lot closer to 40 than 11 million.

it just means that there will be a bigger margin of error. So instead of 9% it may be 4% or 1% or 12% or 20%, etc. I think they should at least do the survey again with the new iphone, pricing and the fact that it'll actually be sold in Japan - it may be incentive enough to buy one.

[magiic]

I am member on another forum called Cheap Ass Gamers and the owner/host of their podcast lives in Tokyo and has been for the past few years. He seems to think the Japanese will be all over the iPhone simply due to the huge market for phones of that nature and the already huge ammount of iPod owners. Just thought I'd chuck that out there.

[arn]

Originally Posted by GutBomb

I said 40 people to point out the ridiculousness of people wetting themselves about 11 million iphone sales in japan. I know full well it's going to fall somewhere in between 40 and 11 million, but i am pretty damn sure it's gonna be a lot closer to 40 than 11 million.

I think you missed the point of this story. "Useless Survey"

arn

[GutBomb]

I'd like to also point out that there haven't even been 11 million iphones sold worldwide yet after being around for a year. I highly doubt one country (that takes phones seriously and hasmany more advanced phones than the iphone) is going to double the world's current sales figures.

Originally Posted by arn

I think you missed the point of this story. "Useless Survey"

arn

I was commenting on the comments here, not the story.

[gcortega]

The iPhone technology in Japan is so 3 years ago

[jcbandxi]

Perhaps setting the context helps make the survey completely meaningless?

1. iPhones are GSM only
2. Japan does not have a GSM network, they have CDMA networks
3. Only Japanese traveling oversease to the US and Europe could use the iPhone as a phone

There is very little practical reason for someone living in Japan to buy an iPhone to use as a phone.

AT&T and Apple negotiated a deal that precludes Apple from manufacturing CDMA phones for five years (to 2012).

[matt archbold]

When are people going to realize that 30% of these online surveys are filled with bulls**t 80% of the time?

[arn]

Originally Posted by jcbandxi

Perhaps setting the context helps make the survey completely meaningless?

1. iPhones are GSM only
2. Japan does not have a GSM network, they have CDMA networks
3. Only Japanese traveling oversease to the US and Europe could use the iPhone as a phone

There is very little practical reason for someone living in Japan to buy an iPhone to use as a phone.

AT&T and Apple negotiated a deal that precludes Apple from manufacturing CDMA phones for five years (to 2012).

Um... the iPhone 3G is coming to Japan. July 11th.

http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2008/06/09softbank.html

arn

[jettoblack]

Personally, my guess is that the iPhone will be somewhat popular among foreigners (especially Westerners) living in Japan, but not so popular among Japanese people. Even die-hard Mac & iPod fans are mostly giving the iPhone a pass here.

If you read some of the early reports from the Japanese press, one of the things they are all angry about is the fact that the iPhone has handwriting recognition for Chinese characters when in Chinese language mode, but won't do it in Japanese mode (even though they use mostly the same characters). Japan and China are like fierce "sibling rivals," and giving a very useful feature to the Chinese but omitting it for the Japanese without any explanation is like a slap in the face to a lot of Japanese people.

The lack of MMS, which is heavily used by all the other Japanese celphone providers, as well as the lack of video calling (not super popular here but a fairly important checkbox feature to have), Felica/"Saifu Keitai" (aka Wallet Phone, RFID money card/train pass), and 1seg TV (mobile HD broadcast offered by all major TV networks), results in the iPhone comparing poorly to even the free throwaway phones you can get from any of the Japanese providers.

[Bob Knob]

The cell phones in Japan are a vast improvement over the crap we in the US have been force fed by our cell providers. So in Japan the iPhone is cool, just not earth shattering.

[swingerofbirch]

Originally Posted by arn

Um... the iPhone 3G is coming to Japan. July 11th.

http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2008/06/09softbank.html

arn

Japan does not have GSM networks. The reason the new iPhone will work is because it also runs on UMTS/HSDPA networks (850, 1900, 2100 MHz). To my understanding, the current iPhone does not work in Japan.

[ben5959]

60% of the time, it works every time

[gkarris]

Great...

The XBOX doesn't really sell there, either...

[cloudnine]

Seems a bit (overly) biased and opinionated to call the survey useless. Most people (outside of MacRumors regulars) would say that most page 1 rumors are useless. Yeah, they could have said the 9% part instead of the 91%, but it all equals the same thing.

[arn]

Originally Posted by swingerofbirch

Japan does not have GSM networks. The reason the new iPhone will work is because it also runs on UMTS/HSDPA networks (850, 1900, 2100 MHz). To my understanding, the current iPhone does not work in Japan.

fair enough, but the context of the survey was after the Softbank announced that they would be bringing the iPhone to Japan, but before the official WWDC launch.

arn