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32 GB iPhone 3GS Ranks as Top Selling Mobile Phone in Japan in July
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Are there very many popular phones in Japan that come from other countries?
What I hate more than anything, is when I hear clueless people saying that the "New/Next iPhone" is already out in Japan cause they get everything sooner than us....
And when they argue back with me that I'm wrong, it makes me like them even more.
What I hate more than anything, is when I hear clueless people saying that the "New/Next iPhone" is already out in Japan cause they get everything sooner than us....
And when they argue back with me that I'm wrong, it makes me like them even more.Id have to disagree as of the few Japanese users i know of, they all said they had no idea about the emoji problems. being that emoji has been standard for a very long time here. its just accepted that you would get emoji in a phone that is sold in this day and age in Japan.
Yes, the cell data network is very nice here in Japan.
Not true.
As itou explains:
But the iPhone's GUI interface is way ahead of most current Japanese headsets. IMHO, most Japanese headsets are a pain to use - too many submenus to navigate around.
I sure hope so. The Japanese GUIs are terrible for the most part -- even on their nice phones. While they have many features that the iPhone doesn't have, it's so difficult to reach and use them.it will force Japanese manufacturers to finally modernize/improve their horrid UIs a bit. The hardware is impressive but the user interface on a lot of these Japanese phones looks like it was designed by someone with about as much expertise as my two year old. Actually, that's not really fair, because my two year old has spent enough time with my iPhone to know what an intuitive, well-designed UI looks like. He could probably do a better job designing one - in his sleep - than most of the "engineers" at the big Japanese phone makers.
Hopefully, the iPhone will continue to be a top seller so that other companies start offering similar headsets.
Do you have a link to a post/info about the throttling??
I've enabled unsupported tethering but seldom use a laptop outside, so haven't pushed it yet, I would like to though.
Softbank were total c*nts about giving me a phone due to my gaijin credit being worthless without a credit card when other carriers gave me more expensive phones on credit immediately.
Yes, the iPhone is miles ahead of Japanese phones as it OS X is to Windows.
I had an 8MP camera phone for 6 months and gave it away for free when i got my 3GS. No full broswer, buggy OS, ***** interface, bad drivers, ***** DRM software, etc, etc.... That one was about 8man yen, so I thought it may be at least like a PDA or Nokia smart phone from years ago - NO!
I've enabled unsupported tethering but seldom use a laptop outside, so haven't pushed it yet, I would like to though.
Softbank were total c*nts about giving me a phone due to my gaijin credit being worthless without a credit card when other carriers gave me more expensive phones on credit immediately.
Yes, the iPhone is miles ahead of Japanese phones as it OS X is to Windows.
I had an 8MP camera phone for 6 months and gave it away for free when i got my 3GS. No full broswer, buggy OS, ***** interface, bad drivers, ***** DRM software, etc, etc.... That one was about 8man yen, so I thought it may be at least like a PDA or Nokia smart phone from years ago - NO!
Yup, but they've started throttling heavy users.
Having owned an iPhone since the day (the hour!) they were released in Japan last year, I've always noticed other iPhone around me on the train, in public, etc. I can tell you this: since the 3GS launched, the number of iPhones I see on a daily basis has skyrocketed! I used to see one or two a week (if that!) whereas I now see three or four a day. My wife says it's the same on her commute, as well. I think the iPhone is doing quite well in Japan, finally.
Wirelessly posted (iPhone 3GS (White, 32GB): Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 3_0 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/528.18 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Mobile/7A341 Safari/528.16)
Here's a link to the press release last May.
http://www.softbankmobile.co.jp/ja/news/press/2009/20090526_01/index.html
It took me nearly twenty minutes today to download a 14.2MB YouTube clip with full strength signal, so yeah. Throttling FTW.
sushi said:
Here's a link to the press release last May.
http://www.softbankmobile.co.jp/ja/news/press/2009/20090526_01/index.html
It took me nearly twenty minutes today to download a 14.2MB YouTube clip with full strength signal, so yeah. Throttling FTW.
Wirelessly posted (iPhone 3GS (White, 32GB): Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 3_0 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/528.18 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Mobile/7A341 Safari/528.16)
You mean push "keitai mail," don't you? Because there's a HUGE difference. In six years of living in Japan - using Sharp, Toshiba, Panasonic, and Fujitsu handsets - I wasn't able to check my personal email accounts (IMAP) using anything but a crappy browser and something like web2mail, until I bought my iPhone. So your comments about Japan having push email for decades is rather misleading. Japanese phones have had dedicated email addresses - accounts which can be accessed ONLY from the handset - for a long time, sure. But that's probably because the carriers here are too boneheaded to have implemented inter-carrier SMS. I mean, how's THAT for advanced? Here it is, 2009, and I STILL can't send SMS/MMS to my friend down the street unless he's using the same carrier as me. Yeah, real advanced.
itou said:
You mean push "keitai mail," don't you? Because there's a HUGE difference. In six years of living in Japan - using Sharp, Toshiba, Panasonic, and Fujitsu handsets - I wasn't able to check my personal email accounts (IMAP) using anything but a crappy browser and something like web2mail, until I bought my iPhone. So your comments about Japan having push email for decades is rather misleading. Japanese phones have had dedicated email addresses - accounts which can be accessed ONLY from the handset - for a long time, sure. But that's probably because the carriers here are too boneheaded to have implemented inter-carrier SMS. I mean, how's THAT for advanced? Here it is, 2009, and I STILL can't send SMS/MMS to my friend down the street unless he's using the same carrier as me. Yeah, real advanced.
Thank you.
Let's see, 20 minutes to DL a 14.2MB video would be about 100Kbps DL speed. A far cry from 7.2Mbps advertised speed. Definite throttling.
The 64 dollar question is why? Is it because you are a heavy user? Or is it because SoftBank can't handle the bandwidth required by their current customers? Or maybe it is a little of both.
No, that's Japanese marketing at their finest!Yeah, real advanced.
Well, I guess it depends on how you define "heavy user" ... I last restored my phone about 50 days ago; my usage according to the iPhone is 26.6MB sent and 601MB received. It's hard for me to accept that 627.6MB of data transfer in almost two months is "heavy" when people here at MR are worried about 2 and 3 and 5 gigabyte caps.
Indeed. What's amazing is that people still swallow it, hook, line, and sinker. People ooh and aah about the great 7.2Mbps network over here, not realizing that we're all throttled - capped at practically dial-up speeds. Or the wondrous Japanese phones that "read barcodes, watch streaming television, pay, have a 10MP camera, conduct solar charging, send emoticons, MMS, video chat, and be waterproof at the same time" but have such a horribly unintuitive UI that they have to ship with a 500+ page instruction manual that requires a PhD to decipher.No, that's Japanese marketing at their finest!
I guess the grass is always greener on the other side. At least Japanese people are finally getting to see what a difference decent software can make. As I said earlier, it should really help improve things over here.
In terms of it improving things here, we agree it's going to take more than a new phone and a do-over of the education system, right?
I saw a device just before I got my 3GS and I was thinking of pairing it with an iPod Touch to give me same functionality.
It's a battery operated wifi access point. Advertised as being able to work with the e-mobile type devices, so you would say plug it into a USB eMobile thingy which is on the 7.2Mbps, and stick it in your pocket, then you would have 7.2Mbps all you can use Wi-Fi anywhere you get coverage with eMobile ***. This method would also allow Skype calls anywhere as the phone would think it's on Wi-Fi, which technically it is.
The device wasn't especially expensive, maybe 5,000yen or so. Then an unlimited data plan with eMobile is cheap now, right? Like 8,000 yen or less?
I would use Skype-out for calls which I hardly make and get a number so people can just call me on it. Oh, but no push for Skype calls right? hmmm...
Not perfect, but maybe paired with a super super cheap Jap phone with one of the better coverage carriers would be a sweet setup. And no need to worry about being suddenly billed a shiteload for "illegal" tethering if they catch on to it...
***(Can't be worse than Shitbank's coverage and dreadful reception (AU was great reception, apparently Docomo is the best and so a lot of business guys here get it even if just for receiving important calls)
I saw a device just before I got my 3GS and I was thinking of pairing it with an iPod Touch to give me same functionality.
It's a battery operated wifi access point. Advertised as being able to work with the e-mobile type devices, so you would say plug it into a USB eMobile thingy which is on the 7.2Mbps, and stick it in your pocket, then you would have 7.2Mbps all you can use Wi-Fi anywhere you get coverage with eMobile ***. This method would also allow Skype calls anywhere as the phone would think it's on Wi-Fi, which technically it is.
The device wasn't especially expensive, maybe 5,000yen or so. Then an unlimited data plan with eMobile is cheap now, right? Like 8,000 yen or less?
I would use Skype-out for calls which I hardly make and get a number so people can just call me on it. Oh, but no push for Skype calls right? hmmm...
Not perfect, but maybe paired with a super super cheap Jap phone with one of the better coverage carriers would be a sweet setup. And no need to worry about being suddenly billed a shiteload for "illegal" tethering if they catch on to it...
***(Can't be worse than Shitbank's coverage and dreadful reception (AU was great reception, apparently Docomo is the best and so a lot of business guys here get it even if just for receiving important calls)
Well, I guess it depends on how you define "heavy user" ... I last restored my phone about 50 days ago; my usage according to the iPhone is 26.6MB sent and 601MB received. It's hard for me to accept that 627.6MB of data transfer in almost two months is "heavy" when people here at MR are worried about 2 and 3 and 5 gigabyte caps.
Indeed. What's amazing is that people still swallow it, hook, line, and sinker. People ooh and aah about the great 7.2Mbps network over here, not realizing that we're all throttled - capped at practically dial-up speeds. Or the wondrous Japanese phones that "read barcodes, watch streaming television, pay, have a 10MP camera, conduct solar charging, send emoticons, MMS, video chat, and be waterproof at the same time" but have such a horribly unintuitive UI that they have to ship with a 500+ page instruction manual that requires a PhD to decipher.
I guess the grass is always greener on the other side. At least Japanese people are finally getting to see what a difference decent software can make. As I said earlier, it should really help improve things over here.
Must be full of very rich people... But, TBH, new stuff comes out in Japan all the time and people always rush to get the latest tech. It's like a country full of me.
This is good news especially seeing as the iPhone is coming out in china soon as well. Although. Just a guess here, but most people know about the iPhone because of the iPod which we know is popular.
That seems light to me.Well, I guess it depends on how you define "heavy user" ... I last restored my phone about 50 days ago; my usage according to the iPhone is 26.6MB sent and 601MB received. It's hard for me to accept that 627.6MB of data transfer in almost two months is "heavy" when people here at MR are worried about 2 and 3 and 5 gigabyte caps.
I wonder if they know that you Jailbreaked your iPhone and believe that you are tethering?
Snort. So true.
This evening I visited my local Yodobashi Camera shop to look at cell phones. So many <hard to use> models are available from the big three (DoCoMo, AU and SoftBank). I was actually surprised at how expensive many models were. The iPhone is comparatively priced it seems.
This new DoCoMo model tickled me. Slide out keyboard. No biggie. But also a screen that rotates. One of the first, if not the first model to do that. Cool concept, but probably wouldn't last long in my hands.
I was looking at getting one of those devices, or just a USB cell modem, with eMobile. Right now they have a promotion going on that has a cap of 4,980 yen max for what they call unlimited data.
At my local Yodobashi Camera store, they had over 10 Netbook computers that you could get for 100 yen if you sign up for their service for 2 years. The deal is very tempting if you want a NetBook with cell Internet access.
Some of their USB cell modems are small like this one. Very convenient to carry with you.
EMOBILE coverage and customer base seems to be growing these days. My communication buddies keep mentioning LTE coming on board next year.
On a side note, in 5-10 years from now I wonder how many Japanese will still have a land line phone? Probably not many.
NTT DoCoMo has the best cell phone network by far. For example, in the past three years, they've more than doubled the number of cell antennas from 30,000 to almost 70,000.
NTT East and NTT West provide the optical fiber support to other companies like SoftBank.
I have some Japanese friends who, before the current economic downturn, changed their cell phones about as often as I changed my underware!
Seriously, some would change each time a new version of their phone was released which is usually every 6 months. in some cases, they changed more often as they hopped from provider to provider to take advantage of the latest switching promotion.
Wirelessly posted (iPhone 3GS (White, 32GB): Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 3_0 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/528.18 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Mobile/7A341 Safari/528.16)
You mean push "keitai mail," don't you? Because there's a HUGE difference. In six years of living in Japan - using Sharp, Toshiba, Panasonic, and Fujitsu handsets - I wasn't able to check my personal email accounts (IMAP) using anything but a crappy browser and something like web2mail, until I bought my iPhone. So your comments about Japan having push email for decades is rather misleading. Japanese phones have had dedicated email addresses - accounts which can be accessed ONLY from the handset - for a long time, sure. But that's probably because the carriers here are too boneheaded to have implemented inter-carrier SMS. I mean, how's THAT for advanced? Here it is, 2009, and I STILL can't send SMS/MMS to my friend down the street unless he's using the same carrier as me. Yeah, real advanced.
we've had e-mail accounts attached to our phones for a long time, it's almost automatic that we never care which carrier our friends are on. i agree that our GUI leaves much to be desired, but we've all gotten so accustomed to it it's almost second nature. regarding emoticons, don't scrap it until you've used it. the japanese use of emoticons is almost an art form and it can break or seal a conversation by the use of it. there are different conversations that demand different emoticons, or even a different color... i'm not sure if you'll understand but i'm sure somebody else would. anyways.
the iphone is a novelty. almost a "celebrity" item here in japan.
there's also a reason why we tend to like clamshells. we hate the idea that others can see who's calling on the other end, and we like the phone to extend to cover our mouths when we speak.
it's a cultural thing.
Translation: We have never been able to send inter-carrier SMS/MMS so we've had to accept the fact that phones in Japan need a dedicated "keitai-mail" address. That doesn't sound too great to me ...
You've become accustomed to how bad it is?
First of all, there's no need to talk down to me, thanks. Second, I've lived in Japan long enough to know that many Japanese people use emoji to convey emotion in email. I think I figured that out within about an hour of getting my first mobile, six years ago. Third, my iPhone can send/receive emoji so it's kind of a moot point anyway, no?
Interesting - I'm curious to see if you're right. Given the shackles SoftBank uses to lock people into their 26 months contracts, I suspect the 'iPhone effect' will simply snowball - as more people buy iPhones and more of their friends see how cool they are (easy to use, fun, convenient, etc) more people will buy them, etc. But I guess we'll see.
Covering your mouth when you speak, being discreet in public? You know, I really wish you'd explain this to young people here in Tokyo, because that part of Japanese culture definitely seems to have been lost somewhere along the way ...
The iphone drops out of the top 10 a week later.
http://bcnranking.jp/category/subcategory_0010.html
http://bcnranking.jp/category/subcategory_0010.html
Wirelessly posted (iPhone 3GS (White, 32GB): Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 3_0 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/528.18 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Mobile/7A341 Safari/528.16)
Jeez, that was quick! Guess SoftBank will have to start paying people to take iPhones -I mean, if FREE isn't working ...
samab said:
Jeez, that was quick! Guess SoftBank will have to start paying people to take iPhones -I mean, if FREE isn't working ...
Translation: We have never been able to send inter-carrier SMS/MMS so we've had to accept the fact that phones in Japan need a dedicated "keitai-mail" address. That doesn't sound too great to me ...
Just thought I'd mention that NHK ran a story in July about inter-carrier SMS support, scheduled to start in 2010. It seems the original NHK story has been removed from the site(?), but loads of J blogs are running the story.
Here's one example.
The article states that all four J carriers, AU, docomo, Softbank, and Emobile will support SMS mail between phone numbers from "next year".
As an aside, one site said this will make guys happy as they can then send mail to girls who only gave them their phone number, conversely, girls will not be a fan of this feature for the above reason...