Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

coolwater

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Jun 8, 2009
722
1
I hear iPhone is becoming a hit in Japan ever since they started giving them away for free. I know iPhone is given away for free, but is it really becoming a hit in Japan? I am getting mixed reports.
 
You've got some funny phrasing there pal.

Some Japanese friends of mine told me that it wasn't selling very well which is why their giving them away but they're not becoming popular anyway.

The iPhone is of course way beyond some other phones, but remember, Japan had 5 megapixel camera phones complete with e-mail and the internet back in 2004. They're still a few years ahead of us which means the iPhone is cool and all, but the domestic brands make phones better suited for the Japanese.
 
They're still a few years ahead of us which means the iPhone is cool and all, but the domestic brands make phones better suited for the Japanese.
And you would know this because ... ?

For the OP, the iPhone was plagued by a number of problems when it launched in Japan, most of which have now been corrected. The iffy first impression coupled with the comparatively high price probably didn't do much to help sales, and even with the current promotion, there still seems to be a lingering perception of the iPhone as being much more expensive than 'regular' phones (which it is not) ... However, the iPhone is still relatively popular here and is the ONLY foreign-made handset I have ever seen on a daily basis in seven years of living in Tokyo.
 
I'm not from Japan but I've been there.

if you go to Japan, you will see kids playing live games on their phones on the street, people watching live TV on the bullet train, video chatting, they even use their phones as credit cards, train cards, barcode scanner etc.....that was back in 2007...
 
Wirelessly posted (iPhone 3G (white): 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)

peteryan7hao said:
I'm not from Japan but I've been there.

if you go to Japan, you will see kids playing live games on their phones on the street, people watching live TV on the bullet train, video chatting, they even use their phones as credit cards, train cards, barcode scanner etc.....that was back in 2007...

I don't know what part of Japan you visited, but what you seem to think is the norm is NOT. ;)

Kids play games on their PSPs in public, not on their mobiles. The only games I regularly see people (adults) playing on their mobiles in public (on the train, etc) are Tetris, card games and slots. :rolleyes: As for watching live TV, yes - I occasionally see that. But most of my friends with OneSEG capable phones say they never use it because unless you're not moving (sitting at a cafe, etc) it constantly cuts out. Video chatting? Extremely expensive (not covered by data plans) and kind of hard to use in public unless you have a headset, which most people do not.  ;)

Felica is used by lots of people and has been for years, so you're right on that one. But all the other stuff - it looks great on paper but just isn't widely used. 
 
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.