I live in Tokyo and have 2 iPhones. Around the time iPhone came out here I kept seeing articles claiming that it would be a failure because it lacked the strap holder and the emoticons Japanese love. One could not help but get the impression that such pessimistic claims were written by jealous PC users who love to bash Apple anything.
As for the SAIFU (wallet) feature in Japanese cell phones that allows one to make purchases, or the SUICA train pass card, I keep mine in a pocket that comes built into the iPhone case I use. Hence it functions just the same way -- I wave my iPhone over the sensor to open the wicket when getting on trains in Japan.
Competitor FUD? Never heard of it. Ballmer anyone?
Word-of-mouth is big in Japan so it doesn't matter what a couple of articles say. If the iPhone satisfies the users they'll text, email, and phone their friends that their phone is so cool. Kind of like America's youth today - all those text'ers.
1) Softbank makes AT&T look wonderful...it's that bad in comparison. In the U.S., I use an iPhone, in Japan something else.
It would be good to investigate who the perpetrators of these "words" are because the evidence I see first hand says otherwise. I do not own an iPhone here in Japan myself, but I have played with the SoftBank iPhone of a co-worker. I also have a brother in CA who uses an iPhone on the AT&T network. And of course as I stated previously, I use a Japanese brand SoftBank phone (705P) under SoftBank's ¥980/mo White Plan.
Except for a dropped call now and then, there is nothing seriously wrong with Softbank. Personally, I think it's worth a dropped call now and then to save a lot of money. I have some Japanese friends who prefer burn their cash on AU simply because they want near 100% guarantees their calls will never be dropped, but I myself prefer the frugal path.
SoftBank 3G is fast and the coverage is excellent, and I thoroughly enjoy that 3G experience on my Japanese brand cell phone. That is not something you can say for AT&T. In speaking with my brother about his experiences in the US with AT&T, combined with my own personal experiences with SoftBank (and indirectly with AU and Docomo via co-workers), I can tell you that SoftBank is certainly not "worse" than AT&T. And if 3G matters to you, then one could effectively argue then that AT&T is worse than SoftBank. Also, if you talk about prices in general (not focusing exclusively on the iPhone), does AT&T have anything close to SoftBank's ¥980/mo 3G White Plan?
My sole purpose in writing this post is to "get the facts straight," which is something that Brian Chen does not do. SoftBank is not as bad as some want it to be, nor is the iPhone selling as bad as Mr. Chen wants it to be.
The problem is that media outlets reward their employees for publicity instead of for getting accurate stories.
The problem is that media outlets have cut so many jobs that there aren't enough professional journalists to do all the reporting required for solid stories. They are forced to run with what they can get by deadline, which is usually from the best-produced press release. If you want diligent reporting, it takes time and resources, which "news" consumers are ever more reluctant to allow.
The problem is that media outlets have cut so many jobs that there aren't enough professional journalists to do all the reporting required for solid stories. They are forced to run with what they can get by deadline, which is usually from the best-produced press release. If you want diligent reporting, it takes time and resources, which "news" consumers are ever more reluctant to allow.
Agreed, but each "news entity" has to decide which way they want their brand to go. It's okay even to split into two - a brand with journalistic ethics, and a different brand for the fast-breaking no-second-source blog. Just decide which so readers know what to expect.
In this case though, it's unclear to me that there was a breaking news story here, or a reason for a deadline. Yes, Softbank lowered the iPhone price to free, but would an extra day or two have made a difference for Brian's crapticle?
.... How does announcing edits on Twitter have anything to do with someone reading the article on Wired? Am I supposed to be reading Twitter while I read an article on Wired? What does transparency have to do with showing pictures of yourself or telling others your email address? Transparency is simply stating in the article that words or sentences were edited or corrected since the original post.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Virgil-TB2
.....Transparency has something to do with how vehemently you are being attacked somehow? WTF? The truth is impossible to relate because people are really angry at you? A-holes are using racial epithets, so that means he's not wrong? I'm really not sure what he's trying to say with this defence. Racism sucks but this sounds weak to me. It's almost like he is saying people are just "against him" because he's (presumably) Chinese. .....
No kidding! I love how many Apple haters come out and defend this guy without even reading about the issue. They apparently are missing the fact that there were many edits to the story -- in particular re-attributions of controversial quotes --- that he still has NEVER directly admitted to, whether on Wired, Twitter, Tweeter, or whatever the hell. The only thing that has been added to the original Wired article was a small update that said he added a quote about PC evolution or something. No mention at all about secretly re-attributing the "iPhone is lame" quote to two different individuals, not to mention distorting information and commentary from the popular Japanese gentleman who has commented on this website.
Sounds like Chen could write for the New York Times or be your "typical" national "chattering class" cable tv channel type personality.
Take old info, out of context, re-edit quote to a new source, they complain, re-edit... lather, rinse, repeat " journalism"!
iPhone, welcome to Sarah Palin's world!
Oh please, that woman destroyed herself with her own unprecedented ignorance, insular attitude, right wing theocratic ideology, divisive vitriol, and short-sighted attempts at "country first" character assassination. Have you read any of her writings? Seen any unscripted interviews? Also, although I do not necessarily "hate" all organized religion, the speaking-in-tongue-demon-exorcism-lets-take-over-America Pentecostalist scares me nearly as much as extremist Islam.
Btw, does anyone really bother to read Wired anymore? I am surprised that they are still around. I have always thought that they belong in the pathetic, Zune category of products: well-meaning, but derivative, always a couple of steps behind, lacking innovation, and not having a particularly compelling set of features or users (i.e., readers).
I've been a subscriber for many years. They've gone down hill since being taken over by Conde Nast. Someone else mentioned them being the "Vanity Fair" of tech magazines. I think that analogy holds. They definitely still have some good feature articles, but the number of ads has gone up, and the front half of the magazine has turned into mostly ads disguised as product news/announcements.
I'm glad Chen has been called on this bad piece and I hope his bosses learn about the negative feedback and do something about it.
I happy to finally see an article address this properly. I live in Tokyo and you see a lot of iPhones here. It's fairly popular and people are pretty impressed with it. It does have some problems though as nothing is perfect.
I'm pretty much in central Tokyo and haven't had a big issue with dropped calls. I do notice that I don't have a signal when some other people do. Normally in the basement bar or some elevators. It hasn't been a big deadl
Price, it's really pretty affordable or at least competive with plans from other providers. The 980 yen white plan is very cheap if you don't talk on the phone much, and most people here don't. The expensive part is the data plan. Most phones only use mobile sites and the plans cap at about 2000 yen a month (for all you can use). The iPhone is more like a computer accessing the full sites. It's plan caps more around 4000 yen, like any of their data plans for computers. More expensive... yes, but nothing out of the ordinary.
I don't actually see too many Japanese paying with their telephone, but it does seem reasonably popular. I find the biggest fault of the iPhone is the input interface for Japanese. Japanese phones may have poor interface in many ways, but one thing they do have down is Japanese text input. Sometimes it takes a bit of time to learn the shortcuts, but it's slick and fast. Japanese actually works very well with a keypad using either input method. Even with practice it's still a lot slower then my last phone. English input on most Japanese phone is painful and that is one advantage of the iPhone.
The other fault I find is that there isn't a mobile browser. Many Japanese sites have a normal web interface, normally fairly heavy and often using a lot of graphics or flash. Pretty slow on the iPhone. They have great fast mobile sites for getting information on the go, but Safari doesn't load those, or displays the text too small. I don't see many iPhone sites here. Allowing Safari to act like a mobile browser most of the time, or a easy in browser switch on the indentification method would be a huge help.
Even in the US, the iPhone is not the most feature rich phone out there. There are a lot of other phones which have more features than the iPhone. Where iPhone trumps the others, is in the usability. Even the most complex features of the iPhone can be used by anyone in just a few minutes. Everything is so intuitive.
There are literally dozens of e-Money and e-ticket options in Japan, and the phones there support only ONE option. Practically everyone in Japan has multiple e-Money cards, because there is no way you can manage with one card on all the varied networks. Till there is some standard, and till these networks manage to talk to each other, no phone in Japan will be worthwhile as an e-Money option. If you have 5 e-Money cards, and one card is supported on the phone, what's the bloody point? Might as well carry 6 cards instead of 5!
As for TV, yes - live TV is interesting and nice - but the iPhone kind of makes up for that by its access to YouTube. And I think we are not too far from the day when we have a YouTube like solution for LiveTV - at that point even this shortcoming will be moot.
The other shortcomings of the iPhone - like lack of Infra-red contact transfer, etc -- all these just amount to different ways of doing things. E-Mail is so much better and more reliable than IR transfer. This issue is a lot like the lack of MMS in the US.
I think at some point, Apple will leverage its gestures edge to allow Japanese direct gesture based text entry. The current form of text entry in Japanese phones is a pretty crude method - using the number keys to enter words phonetically, and then select the kanji from the list displayed. Agreed people get used to the system, and some people can message really fast with this system (even without looking at the phone!!) - but a direct gesture based input method where the Kanji can be directly entered on the screen would be a whole lot better.
People in Japan complain that because of the way computers and mobile phones use phonetic input and translate to the kanji, youngsters in Japan have no opportunity to write the kanjis. So they can write the basic kanji that they learn in school, but cant write other kanji properly.
All Asian languages, with complex scripts, and characters with defined stroke orders, will actually benefit from the iPhone. It is just a matter of time before Apple (or some third party) delivers this "killer" functionality, and then people will be wondering how crude the current phones are!
The iPhone has been a fair success in Japan - and the reason it has not been an even bigger success is because of reasons outside of the phone itself. Softbank's image and network need an upgrade. I think most people would agree that whatever success iPhone has had in Japan has been inspite of Softbank - not because of Softbank. For a parallel in the US, imagine if Apple chose to launch with T-Mobile or even worse, with Sprint.
Why should Apple care whether or not the iPhone sells in Japan and S. Korea? They're small countries and if Apple can sell the iPhone to 95% of the world then they can just forget about those two countries and still make huge profits. It's plain to see that the people in Japan and S. Korea march to a different drum. They do things their own way and are certainly out of step with the rest of the world. I said out of step, not behind, but different. Apple certainly could add some features to attract users in Japan and S. Korea, but then they'd have to build special models just for them. I suppose Apple could license those eWallet chips. Having an eWallet sounds very convenient, but it must be disastrous if you lose your phone, unless there's some password to protect it from working or the people are honest and will return your cellphone to you right away. Adding an attachment for mascots should be simple enough, but it really seems useless in my estimation. I'd never consider having some mascot on my cellphone.
So if Japan and S. Korea clearly don't have a need for iPhones, well that's their choice. Whether the rest of the world will eventually have Suica and eWallets is anyone guess, but until the rest of the world starts using that proprietary stuff, Apple should continue building devices that suit the majority of people in the world. There are always going to be some cellphone users that the iPhone doesn't fit, but if they're in the minority, so what.
Why should Apple care whether or not the iPhone sells in Japan and S. Korea? They're small countries and if ....
While I agree Apple doesn't need to persuade the entire developed world to buy the iPhone, I wouldn't call Japan and S Korea "small". S. Korea has more people than most European countries and Japan has more than a 125 million!
Why should Apple care whether or not the iPhone sells in Japan and S. Korea? They're small countries and if Apple can sell the iPhone to 95% of the world then they can just forget about those two countries...
Japan is the world's fourth largest mobile phone market.
Why should Apple care whether or not the iPhone sells in Japan and S. Korea? They're small countries...
I don't know which is more offensive. This stupid sentence or the diatribe authored by Brian Chen.
Japan is still the second largest economy in the world. Successful sales in Japan also aids the manufacturer in knowing the quality of its product. For if your product can sell well here, it will likely sell well in many other countries too (I speak in terms of quality and general convenience features here).
The "who cares about Japan" mentally is common among many in the US, which is also why many American companies are not so successful here (as opposed to Japan trying to keep them out).
And everything you have to do is to make the Japanese change their ways just because you're offering them a cellphone contract being the most expensive on the market.
Apple shouldn't care much how well iPhone is sold in Japan not because someone views Japan as a godforsaken minor market, but for iPhone wasn't designed to target this very market.
As for the SAIFU (wallet) feature in Japanese cell phones that allows one to make purchases, or the SUICA train pass card, I keep mine in a pocket that comes built into the iPhone case I use. Hence it functions just the same way -- I wave my iPhone over the sensor to open the wicket when getting on trains in Japan.
Sorry mate... that it NOT the same as an osaifu keitai. That's a SUICA card tucked behind an iPhone case. LOL Are you even serious? That's like putting a board on two pairs of old rollerskate wheels and saying you have a Sims skateboard. Anyway semantics aside, the iPhone is not for people who like regular fast kanji input on their phones. I want and iPodTouch/iPhone. But guess what. I'm not getting one because the kanji input sucks balls.
Comments
As for the SAIFU (wallet) feature in Japanese cell phones that allows one to make purchases, or the SUICA train pass card, I keep mine in a pocket that comes built into the iPhone case I use. Hence it functions just the same way -- I wave my iPhone over the sensor to open the wicket when getting on trains in Japan.
Sounds like Chen could write for the New York Times or be your "typical" national "chattering class" cable tv channel type personality.
Take old info, out of context, re-edit quote to a new source, they complain, re-edit... lather, rinse, repeat " journalism"!
iPhone, welcome to Sarah Palin's world!
Do me a favor and don't mention that horse faced bitch on this site again, ok?
Word-of-mouth is big in Japan so it doesn't matter what a couple of articles say. If the iPhone satisfies the users they'll text, email, and phone their friends that their phone is so cool. Kind of like America's youth today - all those text'ers.
Summarizing the words of many:
1) Softbank makes AT&T look wonderful...it's that bad in comparison. In the U.S., I use an iPhone, in Japan something else.
It would be good to investigate who the perpetrators of these "words" are because the evidence I see first hand says otherwise. I do not own an iPhone here in Japan myself, but I have played with the SoftBank iPhone of a co-worker. I also have a brother in CA who uses an iPhone on the AT&T network. And of course as I stated previously, I use a Japanese brand SoftBank phone (705P) under SoftBank's ¥980/mo White Plan.
Except for a dropped call now and then, there is nothing seriously wrong with Softbank. Personally, I think it's worth a dropped call now and then to save a lot of money. I have some Japanese friends who prefer burn their cash on AU simply because they want near 100% guarantees their calls will never be dropped, but I myself prefer the frugal path.
SoftBank 3G is fast and the coverage is excellent, and I thoroughly enjoy that 3G experience on my Japanese brand cell phone. That is not something you can say for AT&T. In speaking with my brother about his experiences in the US with AT&T, combined with my own personal experiences with SoftBank (and indirectly with AU and Docomo via co-workers), I can tell you that SoftBank is certainly not "worse" than AT&T. And if 3G matters to you, then one could effectively argue then that AT&T is worse than SoftBank. Also, if you talk about prices in general (not focusing exclusively on the iPhone), does AT&T have anything close to SoftBank's ¥980/mo 3G White Plan?
My sole purpose in writing this post is to "get the facts straight," which is something that Brian Chen does not do. SoftBank is not as bad as some want it to be, nor is the iPhone selling as bad as Mr. Chen wants it to be.
The problem is that media outlets reward their employees for publicity instead of for getting accurate stories.
The problem is that media outlets have cut so many jobs that there aren't enough professional journalists to do all the reporting required for solid stories. They are forced to run with what they can get by deadline, which is usually from the best-produced press release. If you want diligent reporting, it takes time and resources, which "news" consumers are ever more reluctant to allow.
The problem is that media outlets have cut so many jobs that there aren't enough professional journalists to do all the reporting required for solid stories. They are forced to run with what they can get by deadline, which is usually from the best-produced press release. If you want diligent reporting, it takes time and resources, which "news" consumers are ever more reluctant to allow.
Agreed, but each "news entity" has to decide which way they want their brand to go. It's okay even to split into two - a brand with journalistic ethics, and a different brand for the fast-breaking no-second-source blog. Just decide which so readers know what to expect.
In this case though, it's unclear to me that there was a breaking news story here, or a reason for a deadline. Yes, Softbank lowered the iPhone price to free, but would an extra day or two have made a difference for Brian's crapticle?
.... How does announcing edits on Twitter have anything to do with someone reading the article on Wired? Am I supposed to be reading Twitter while I read an article on Wired? What does transparency have to do with showing pictures of yourself or telling others your email address? Transparency is simply stating in the article that words or sentences were edited or corrected since the original post.
.....Transparency has something to do with how vehemently you are being attacked somehow? WTF? The truth is impossible to relate because people are really angry at you? A-holes are using racial epithets, so that means he's not wrong? I'm really not sure what he's trying to say with this defence. Racism sucks but this sounds weak to me. It's almost like he is saying people are just "against him" because he's (presumably) Chinese. .....
No kidding! I love how many Apple haters come out and defend this guy without even reading about the issue. They apparently are missing the fact that there were many edits to the story -- in particular re-attributions of controversial quotes --- that he still has NEVER directly admitted to, whether on Wired, Twitter, Tweeter, or whatever the hell. The only thing that has been added to the original Wired article was a small update that said he added a quote about PC evolution or something. No mention at all about secretly re-attributing the "iPhone is lame" quote to two different individuals, not to mention distorting information and commentary from the popular Japanese gentleman who has commented on this website.
Sounds like Chen could write for the New York Times or be your "typical" national "chattering class" cable tv channel type personality.
Take old info, out of context, re-edit quote to a new source, they complain, re-edit... lather, rinse, repeat " journalism"!
iPhone, welcome to Sarah Palin's world!
Oh please, that woman destroyed herself with her own unprecedented ignorance, insular attitude, right wing theocratic ideology, divisive vitriol, and short-sighted attempts at "country first" character assassination. Have you read any of her writings? Seen any unscripted interviews? Also, although I do not necessarily "hate" all organized religion, the speaking-in-tongue-demon-exorcism-lets-take-over-America Pentecostalist scares me nearly as much as extremist Islam.
Fantastic job with this article, AI.
Btw, does anyone really bother to read Wired anymore? I am surprised that they are still around. I have always thought that they belong in the pathetic, Zune category of products: well-meaning, but derivative, always a couple of steps behind, lacking innovation, and not having a particularly compelling set of features or users (i.e., readers).
I've been a subscriber for many years. They've gone down hill since being taken over by Conde Nast. Someone else mentioned them being the "Vanity Fair" of tech magazines. I think that analogy holds. They definitely still have some good feature articles, but the number of ads has gone up, and the front half of the magazine has turned into mostly ads disguised as product news/announcements.
I'm glad Chen has been called on this bad piece and I hope his bosses learn about the negative feedback and do something about it.
- Jasen.
I'm pretty much in central Tokyo and haven't had a big issue with dropped calls. I do notice that I don't have a signal when some other people do. Normally in the basement bar or some elevators. It hasn't been a big deadl
Price, it's really pretty affordable or at least competive with plans from other providers. The 980 yen white plan is very cheap if you don't talk on the phone much, and most people here don't. The expensive part is the data plan. Most phones only use mobile sites and the plans cap at about 2000 yen a month (for all you can use). The iPhone is more like a computer accessing the full sites. It's plan caps more around 4000 yen, like any of their data plans for computers. More expensive... yes, but nothing out of the ordinary.
I don't actually see too many Japanese paying with their telephone, but it does seem reasonably popular. I find the biggest fault of the iPhone is the input interface for Japanese. Japanese phones may have poor interface in many ways, but one thing they do have down is Japanese text input. Sometimes it takes a bit of time to learn the shortcuts, but it's slick and fast. Japanese actually works very well with a keypad using either input method. Even with practice it's still a lot slower then my last phone. English input on most Japanese phone is painful and that is one advantage of the iPhone.
The other fault I find is that there isn't a mobile browser. Many Japanese sites have a normal web interface, normally fairly heavy and often using a lot of graphics or flash. Pretty slow on the iPhone. They have great fast mobile sites for getting information on the go, but Safari doesn't load those, or displays the text too small. I don't see many iPhone sites here. Allowing Safari to act like a mobile browser most of the time, or a easy in browser switch on the indentification method would be a huge help.
There are literally dozens of e-Money and e-ticket options in Japan, and the phones there support only ONE option. Practically everyone in Japan has multiple e-Money cards, because there is no way you can manage with one card on all the varied networks. Till there is some standard, and till these networks manage to talk to each other, no phone in Japan will be worthwhile as an e-Money option. If you have 5 e-Money cards, and one card is supported on the phone, what's the bloody point? Might as well carry 6 cards instead of 5!
As for TV, yes - live TV is interesting and nice - but the iPhone kind of makes up for that by its access to YouTube. And I think we are not too far from the day when we have a YouTube like solution for LiveTV - at that point even this shortcoming will be moot.
The other shortcomings of the iPhone - like lack of Infra-red contact transfer, etc -- all these just amount to different ways of doing things. E-Mail is so much better and more reliable than IR transfer. This issue is a lot like the lack of MMS in the US.
I think at some point, Apple will leverage its gestures edge to allow Japanese direct gesture based text entry. The current form of text entry in Japanese phones is a pretty crude method - using the number keys to enter words phonetically, and then select the kanji from the list displayed. Agreed people get used to the system, and some people can message really fast with this system (even without looking at the phone!!) - but a direct gesture based input method where the Kanji can be directly entered on the screen would be a whole lot better.
People in Japan complain that because of the way computers and mobile phones use phonetic input and translate to the kanji, youngsters in Japan have no opportunity to write the kanjis. So they can write the basic kanji that they learn in school, but cant write other kanji properly.
All Asian languages, with complex scripts, and characters with defined stroke orders, will actually benefit from the iPhone. It is just a matter of time before Apple (or some third party) delivers this "killer" functionality, and then people will be wondering how crude the current phones are!
The iPhone has been a fair success in Japan - and the reason it has not been an even bigger success is because of reasons outside of the phone itself. Softbank's image and network need an upgrade. I think most people would agree that whatever success iPhone has had in Japan has been inspite of Softbank - not because of Softbank. For a parallel in the US, imagine if Apple chose to launch with T-Mobile or even worse, with Sprint.
So if Japan and S. Korea clearly don't have a need for iPhones, well that's their choice. Whether the rest of the world will eventually have Suica and eWallets is anyone guess, but until the rest of the world starts using that proprietary stuff, Apple should continue building devices that suit the majority of people in the world. There are always going to be some cellphone users that the iPhone doesn't fit, but if they're in the minority, so what.
Why should Apple care whether or not the iPhone sells in Japan and S. Korea? They're small countries and if ....
While I agree Apple doesn't need to persuade the entire developed world to buy the iPhone, I wouldn't call Japan and S Korea "small". S. Korea has more people than most European countries and Japan has more than a 125 million!
Why should Apple care whether or not the iPhone sells in Japan and S. Korea? They're small countries and if Apple can sell the iPhone to 95% of the world then they can just forget about those two countries...
Japan is the world's fourth largest mobile phone market.
Why should Apple care whether or not the iPhone sells in Japan and S. Korea? They're small countries...
I don't know which is more offensive. This stupid sentence or the diatribe authored by Brian Chen.
Japan is still the second largest economy in the world. Successful sales in Japan also aids the manufacturer in knowing the quality of its product. For if your product can sell well here, it will likely sell well in many other countries too (I speak in terms of quality and general convenience features here).
The "who cares about Japan" mentally is common among many in the US, which is also why many American companies are not so successful here (as opposed to Japan trying to keep them out).
Apple shouldn't care much how well iPhone is sold in Japan not because someone views Japan as a godforsaken minor market, but for iPhone wasn't designed to target this very market.
As for the SAIFU (wallet) feature in Japanese cell phones that allows one to make purchases, or the SUICA train pass card, I keep mine in a pocket that comes built into the iPhone case I use. Hence it functions just the same way -- I wave my iPhone over the sensor to open the wicket when getting on trains in Japan.
Sorry mate... that it NOT the same as an osaifu keitai. That's a SUICA card tucked behind an iPhone case. LOL Are you even serious? That's like putting a board on two pairs of old rollerskate wheels and saying you have a Sims skateboard. Anyway semantics aside, the iPhone is not for people who like regular fast kanji input on their phones. I want and iPodTouch/iPhone. But guess what. I'm not getting one because the kanji input sucks balls.
that was an incredible point-by-point, sir.
Is there a worse Apple advocacy site?