Can those features be added as applications or do they require hardware support.
The TV stuff requires hardware, obviously...
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Useless Survey: 91% of Japanese Will Not Buy 'iPhone'
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The TV stuff requires hardware, obviously...
You really think Softbank would be willing to foot the bill for a piece of hardware that would go into EVERY iPhone in the world but that can only be used here in Japan? It doesn't make sense. As for the lack of OneSEG and Felica being turnoffs, I guess we'll have to wait and see - but the pre-order waiting lists at every shop that is accepting reservations tells me they won't care.
That said, I wonder how they'll react by the lack of MMS and emoji, both of which have been standard for many years here in Japan. That will be a tough sell, because while most people can't figure out how to use Felica and Bluetooth and other features, the DO use MMS and emoji, heavily.
Hmm
Ever been to Japan? They LOVE electronics and travel by train and everyone is using their phone. Also the Japanese love the way things look and are packaged.
Not speaking Japanese and shopping for food was a nightmare - could not even find butter as it was so beautifully packaged.
The iPhone will be a success - no question. I think Apple were wise though to wait until they had 3G.
The poll is totally irrelavent with a sample size that small.
If the iPhone is a Quad band phone it will work in Japan. My tri-band did not!
Ever been to Japan? They LOVE electronics and travel by train and everyone is using their phone. Also the Japanese love the way things look and are packaged.
Not speaking Japanese and shopping for food was a nightmare - could not even find butter as it was so beautifully packaged.
The iPhone will be a success - no question. I think Apple were wise though to wait until they had 3G.
The poll is totally irrelavent with a sample size that small.
If the iPhone is a Quad band phone it will work in Japan. My tri-band did not!
fyi, they surveyed CLUB BBQ free email forwarding service members
http://iphone-japan.blogspot.com/2008/06/91-of-japanese-will-not-buy-iphone-oh.html
http://iphone-japan.blogspot.com/2008/06/91-of-japanese-will-not-buy-iphone-oh.html
As a person living in Japan I think I can speak to this a bit. Seg1 TV is not important. It doesn't work very well so people don't use it very much. If you move (even just walking), or go underground the signal goes to crap. And most phones here still don't have it either. Seg1 might be the future, but the future is neither here nor working yet.
Phones here do have a lot on them, off the top of my head the things that people here are bound to miss are:
* lack of infrared (used to easily share contact info & more)
* inability to read barcodes / characters
* no dictionary (japanese to english)
There are of course various other features that some phones have, but these three are fairly standard. The first being the biggest gotcha here.
Except for infrared, most things can be added as apps, but unless they are free apps it'll be a hard sell. "Oh, you don't like that this phone can't read bar codes like all the others? ...Well you can buy the bar code app!" Who wouldn't like to pay even more to keep the status quo in feature set?
That aside, there is one other huge factor— the coolness factor. Japan is a very fashion savvy country. If the iPhone is seen as a hip phone (it is) it will sell well. It stands very little chance of hitting the market share it's getting in the US (by virtue of the many kinds of phone companies and phone choices), but it'll sell.
I hope this clears things up a bit. While I'm no expert myself, I'm tired of reading posts made by people who have no knowledge whatsoever of Japan proclaiming the iPhone years behind anything in Japan and etc. It isn't true.
edit: not all that many people use felica, but it will rule out those customers. Emoji on the other hand really would be a big miss. However I can't see them not being added. Hundreds of emoji is overstating it though. More like a hundred. Similarly, language prediction is a must. You type in hiragana so it has to be changed to Kanji (where applicable). OS X does this, so I think that it wouldn't be a big problem to get the kanji going, but the prediction might be a little hairy. We'll see.
Phones here do have a lot on them, off the top of my head the things that people here are bound to miss are:
* lack of infrared (used to easily share contact info & more)
* inability to read barcodes / characters
* no dictionary (japanese to english)
There are of course various other features that some phones have, but these three are fairly standard. The first being the biggest gotcha here.
Except for infrared, most things can be added as apps, but unless they are free apps it'll be a hard sell. "Oh, you don't like that this phone can't read bar codes like all the others? ...Well you can buy the bar code app!" Who wouldn't like to pay even more to keep the status quo in feature set?
That aside, there is one other huge factor— the coolness factor. Japan is a very fashion savvy country. If the iPhone is seen as a hip phone (it is) it will sell well. It stands very little chance of hitting the market share it's getting in the US (by virtue of the many kinds of phone companies and phone choices), but it'll sell.
I hope this clears things up a bit. While I'm no expert myself, I'm tired of reading posts made by people who have no knowledge whatsoever of Japan proclaiming the iPhone years behind anything in Japan and etc. It isn't true.
edit: not all that many people use felica, but it will rule out those customers. Emoji on the other hand really would be a big miss. However I can't see them not being added. Hundreds of emoji is overstating it though. More like a hundred. Similarly, language prediction is a must. You type in hiragana so it has to be changed to Kanji (where applicable). OS X does this, so I think that it wouldn't be a big problem to get the kanji going, but the prediction might be a little hairy. We'll see.
sorry, wrong terminology. Statistics class was a long time ago. My point was that the more people taking the poll and the more random sampling there is makes for a more accurate poll.
No, i think its you that doesn't know how statistics works. An internet poll is a convenience sample. Meaning, only people with an interest or bias will volunteer to participate. The data of the poll is therefor most likely inflated. Meaning if the poll resulted in 9% of responders wanting an iphone, that number is most likely well above the actual long-run percentage. Bringing us to the conclusion that this article is ridiculous to claim that 9% of Japanese people will buy an iphone. This article is has been spun so much that it is laughable.
Have you read anyof my other posts? I mentioned that if only a certain group of people (be it male, female, young, old, nerdy, non-nerdy, willing to participate in internet polls, not willing to participate in internet polls, etc.) responding to a poll will throw off the accuracy as well.
Please read all the way through before quoting. Thanks.
Just to throw out some anecdotal evidence... I was with some Japanese a few months ago, and they seemed pretty eager to check out our iPhones. My sense is apple has some coolness with the Japanese, unlike Microsoft and the xbox. Even Nintendo cited Apple as an inspiration for the Wii's case design. So it probably won't be a complete failure there, although it seems hard to imagine it having the same sort of sucess as inthe states.
PS. Can someone please buy Arn an iPhone so he will make macrumors work with it? Every key I type makes the whole screen scroll from the top left insanely (at least with beta 2.0), plus the tiny page navigation buttons are impossible to hit. Why not have a nice big "next" button like on digg?
PS. Can someone please buy Arn an iPhone so he will make macrumors work with it? Every key I type makes the whole screen scroll from the top left insanely (at least with beta 2.0), plus the tiny page navigation buttons are impossible to hit. Why not have a nice big "next" button like on digg?
My experience in Japan is that they have a small but dedicated group of Apple fans. I'm sure it will do well with those on Apple's side, but as usual, the others will make it their job to pick it apart.... most likely because it helps them feel less jealous.
mobile.macrumors.com is your friend
Although it doesn't work perfectly on the Touch/iPhone (lots of rendering erros for some reason) it's faster and easier than using the 'full' site.
Plus the fact that the iPhone 2.0 firmware will allow saving pictures from email attachments to the Photos.app, and of course any of those pictures can be used as wallpaper.
That said, in my six years of living in Japan I've never ONCE seen a purikura used as wallpaper, ANYWHERE (trains, schools, etc) ...
my take =
Otis B. Driftwood: Now pay particular attention to this first clause because it's most important. It says the, uh...The party of the first part shall be known in this contract as the party of the first part." How do you like that? That's pretty neat, eh?
Fiorello: No, that's no good.
Otis B. Driftwood: What's the matter with it?
Fiorello: I dunno. Let's hear it again.
Otis B. Driftwood: It says the, uh...The party of the first part shall be known in this contract as the party of the first part."
Fiorello: That sounds a little better this time.
Otis B. Driftwood: Well, it grows on you. Would you like to hear it once more?
Fiorello: Er... just the first part.
Otis B. Driftwood: What do you mean? The... the party of the first part?
Fiorello: No, the first part of the party of the first part.
Otis B. Driftwood: All right. It says the, uh, "The first part of the party of the first part shall be known in this contract as the first part of the party of the first part shall be known in this contract... look, why should we quarrel about a thing like this? We'll take it right out, eh?
[Fiorello and Driftwood go over the second clause of their contract]
Otis B. Driftwood: Now, it says, uh, "The party of the second part shall be known in this contract as the party of the second part."
Fiorello: Well, I don't know about that...
Otis B. Driftwood: Now what's the matter?
Fiorello: I no like-a the second party, either.
Otis B. Driftwood: Well, you should of come to the first party. We didn't get home 'til around four in the morning. I was blind for three days!
Otis B. Driftwood: Now pay particular attention to this first clause because it's most important. It says the, uh...The party of the first part shall be known in this contract as the party of the first part." How do you like that? That's pretty neat, eh?
Fiorello: No, that's no good.
Otis B. Driftwood: What's the matter with it?
Fiorello: I dunno. Let's hear it again.
Otis B. Driftwood: It says the, uh...The party of the first part shall be known in this contract as the party of the first part."
Fiorello: That sounds a little better this time.
Otis B. Driftwood: Well, it grows on you. Would you like to hear it once more?
Fiorello: Er... just the first part.
Otis B. Driftwood: What do you mean? The... the party of the first part?
Fiorello: No, the first part of the party of the first part.
Otis B. Driftwood: All right. It says the, uh, "The first part of the party of the first part shall be known in this contract as the first part of the party of the first part shall be known in this contract... look, why should we quarrel about a thing like this? We'll take it right out, eh?
[Fiorello and Driftwood go over the second clause of their contract]
Otis B. Driftwood: Now, it says, uh, "The party of the second part shall be known in this contract as the party of the second part."
Fiorello: Well, I don't know about that...
Otis B. Driftwood: Now what's the matter?
Fiorello: I no like-a the second party, either.
Otis B. Driftwood: Well, you should of come to the first party. We didn't get home 'til around four in the morning. I was blind for three days!
The iPhone technology in Japan is so 3 years ago
Japan may have amazing specs and ubiquitous 3G, but I lived in Japan a little over three years ago and no phone on the market had an interface remotely like the iPhone. Nor the frictionless movement from one function to the other.
Check out Wireless Watch Japan if you want to know what is happening with the mobile phone market in Japan. They are just as excited to see the iPhone arrive this summer via Softbank as the US was a year ago. You can be sure that the carriers DoCoMo and KDDI as well as Panasonic, Sharp, and Sony are concerned about its arrival. A single handset that might sell into 9% of a market that replaces their phones on average every 8 months would be phenomenal for a new entrant.
Japanese consumers are incredibly label, celebrity and exclusivity conscious. Twelve dozen well placed phones could start a run on the handsets that would make them the most desirable handset for a quarter or more. I am sure the lines at the Apple Store in Ginza will be record setting the day it is released.
Fake!
I'm not sure where this news came from . If it were report of something, that is 'fake'.
Japanese loves marks of specsheets, Yes, that's right. At the result, Japanese cell phone have a lot of unnecessary functions, like TV, Radio, MP3 Player, Camera, even electric money.
Many people around me say 'we don't need any more function except phone, www browser, SMS'. They also want iPhone. Especially multi-touch UI is so interesting for them, off course, me too.
Softbank which is company of iPhone 3G carrior in Japan has a criminal record. 'a criminal record' means that Softbank had a lot trouble when they started new service. After they announced about iPhone 3G, they didn't make any comment about iPhone 3G.
Apple and they said iPhone 3G started in July 11. I am worried that Softbank may make trouble iPhone 3G.
I'm not sure where this news came from . If it were report of something, that is 'fake'.
Japanese loves marks of specsheets, Yes, that's right. At the result, Japanese cell phone have a lot of unnecessary functions, like TV, Radio, MP3 Player, Camera, even electric money.
Many people around me say 'we don't need any more function except phone, www browser, SMS'. They also want iPhone. Especially multi-touch UI is so interesting for them, off course, me too.
Softbank which is company of iPhone 3G carrior in Japan has a criminal record. 'a criminal record' means that Softbank had a lot trouble when they started new service. After they announced about iPhone 3G, they didn't make any comment about iPhone 3G.
Apple and they said iPhone 3G started in July 11. I am worried that Softbank may make trouble iPhone 3G.
Bullcrap, the typical BS these greedy companies feed you.
Geographically 90% of continental US population live in or around metropolitan areas and Europe is far ahead of US since the 90s. Look at the cable market - wireless phone smarket wass the same for long time except they are not tied by cables. It's nothing but lack of investment due to lack of corporate regulations.
SO people say "it's unnecessary" for all extras except when it's in the iPhone?
You fanboys are hilarious, seriously.
Actually, there is only one app I've never used on my iPod touch: the iTunes Store app. Everything else I find useful (to varying degrees) ... However there are lots of features on my mobiles that I've never used over the years - OneSeg, Felica, Bluetooth chat, Navi, etc. So, yeah - I'd feel comfortable referring to those as unnecessary.