Apple’s iPhone: Japan will love it, Japan will buy it
Although I started out as somewhat of a skeptic about the iPhone, mainly in reaction to the blanket news coverage it has been receiving, reflecting on the situation I now consider that the iPhone has what it takes to be big in Japan; indeed to become the very first foreign mobile phone (Sony-Ericsson doesn’t countas foreign!) to be a success in Japan’s rather insular market. There are, however, a small number of additions and modifications that I propose Apple must make to the hardware, software, and design before they can consider selling it in Japan.
iPhone: Japan’s carriers
Looking at the market image of the three big mobile phone carriers, namely NTT DoCoMo, au by KDDI, and SoftBank, the most natural fit would be au, as according to many surveys they have the strongest image for being on the leading edge and for supporting music playback on their phones. However, if a bidding war starts, SoftBank may be prepared to lay the most cash on the table as they are most desparate for customers, and with Cameron Diaz and Bradd Pitt pushing an American image of talking on the phone for SoftBank, SoftBank’s president Masayoshi Son may see the iPhone as a natural extension of his brand. Therefore, I predict there will be a SoftBank iPhone on the shelves early next year.
iPhone: Japan needs 3G
It needs it in the US and in Europe too, so no more needs to be said about it. All Japanese carriers have stopped making new 2G models, so the iPhone must have 3G speeds to avoid being labeled as outdated.
iPhone: Japan needs a worse browser
Safari has been getting rave reviews in the USA, but the Japanese have been browsing for years in the walled garden of made-for-mobile web sites authored in C-HTML, Compact-HTML. There are too many existing services that are already designed for mobile phones for Apple to ignore, so they need to provide a downgraded browser that can support these sorts of sites without any fancy zooming or panning, just scrolling up and down.
iPhone: Japan needs emoji
Nearly three in four Japanese currently sprinkle some or all of their email with small colourful dingbat-like icons built into the phones from all of the major providers. The current methods of selecting these characters seriously needs a usability make-over that people look to Apple to implement, but without smilies, the average Japanese cell phone email would look naked and dull.
iPhone: Japan needs a retro keyboard
The biggest thing that the English-language iPhone seems to have got wrong is the keyboard. With Japanese, this style of keyboard will be even more problematic, and with many people as familiar, if not more familiar, with mobile-phone style keyboards as with traditional QWERTY ones, Apple should accept that as with the browser issues above, the older and more familiar methods of input need to be supported too. As with emoji above, I’m looking to Apple to sprinkle its magic pixie dust over the UI and the input prediction methods, but the underlying paradigm should be the standard 10-key method.
iPhone: Japan needs a strap hook
Almost everyone in Japan hangs some sort of mascot character on their phones, so without a mounting point for these straps, the iPhone will look very bare indeed. It’s just a very small thing, but it’s important and shows to potential consumers that Apple cares about Japan and Japanese sensibilities.
iPhone: Japan has it all already
A common theme running through various articles on the impending failure of the iPhone to penetrate the Japanese market is that all the features exist already in cell phones available in Japan today. While this point is indeed true and the raw feature set of the iPhone has little that is revoultionary, one need only look to Nintendo’s Wii and DS, which on paper are rather limited, or even in fact the iPod, which entered a Japanese market already crowded with offering from both domestic and overseas manufactures, yet still swempt them all away mostly on the strength of brand image and slickly integrated product. I believe the iPhone can help Apple make history repeat itself.
iPhone: Japan doesn’t need…
A recent survey showed that two requirements high in potential purchasers’ minds were One Seg digital terrestrial television and RFID-based electronic cash solutions. However, other surveys have shown that despite the fact that most new models support one or both of these features, the actual percentage of users accessing these features is rather limited. With YouTube support, One Seg television becomes less important, and many more people use traditional card-based electronic cash systems than use mobile phone-embedded FeliCa IC card chips.
Conclusion
Next year we will see a SoftBank Apple iPhone which while it may not replicate the roaring success of the iPhone in the USA or of the iPod in Japan, it will make a definite impact and change the face of the Japanese cell phone market. Up until now there has been perhaps just too cosy a relationship between the carriers and the manufacturers which while not stifling innovation, excluding physical design issues it has not encouraged manufacturers to be bold or different. Even if the iPhone itself never manages to gain a significant market share, its mere presence on the Japanese market can only benefit consumers.
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Apple’s iPhone: Japan will love it, Japan will buy it said,
July 18, 2007 @ 13:10
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University Update - Apple iPhone - Apple’s iPhone: Japan will love it, Japan will buy it said,
July 18, 2007 @ 13:55
[…] Link to Article apple iphone Apple’s iPhone: Japan will love it, Japan will buy it » Posted […]
Ken Aston said,
July 18, 2007 @ 14:09
>I predict there will be a SoftBank iPhone
Softbank own’s a large share of Yahoo! Japan and is in business with Yahoo! US. They are big competitors of Google. With the evolving relationship between Apple and Google, and Eric Schmidt on the board of Apple, my prediction is it won’t be a Softbank iPhone. What do you think?
BTW, thanks for the great insights on Japan, please keep posting!
Durf said,
July 18, 2007 @ 16:21
Yahoo Japan is doing business with Apple already. I don’t see any reason to deny the possibility of a Softbank deal based on Yahoo’s position here.
http://www.apple.com/jp/itunes/yahoomusic/
看 ， 那 个 人 在 飞 ！ » iPhone在日本的前途问题（偶尔严肃一点） said,
July 18, 2007 @ 19:40
[…] 看到一篇简单的关于iPhone在日本的前景分析，干脆转载一下算了。其实一直想写一下iPhone的，但是一个是没什么有趣的写法和点，而且我虽然觉得它挺好的，但的确不太需要它。现在我看到再喜欢的手机，也不会觉得哎呀我要买来用，最多只是会想啊如果手上这台坏掉的话就用你来替代吧！ […]
Apple’s iPhone: Japan will love it, Japan will buy it said,
July 18, 2007 @ 23:35
Apple’s iPhone: Japan will love it, Japan will buy it…
Great post. Thanks! I’ll add a link to your post….
Jon said,
July 18, 2007 @ 23:47
What about the iphone batter issue I have heard about? Apple has kind of hidden the fact that replacing the iphone battery is very inconvenient and fairly expensive. I don’t think alot of people realize that you have to send your phone to Apple for battery replacement, the batter is not cheap, you will be without your phone for a while and, although they offer a loaner, you have to pay for the loaner as well.
jim said,
July 19, 2007 @ 02:03
i’ve got an iphone and what a lot of people who don’t actually own one fail to grasp is the overwhelming superiority of being able to side-load your content from a pc as opposed to downloading it over the air. itunes trumps any carrier’s network in the world - including japan. while you can of course watch tv on a phone in japan, it isn’t as high quality and trouble free as a video ipod…functionality which is in the iphone. you can download songs in japan but you can’t synch your ENTIRE MP3 music library for free. in short, apple is doing an end run around the carriers’ broken content delivery model…just like they did to the music industry. even in japan where the model is less broken, apple will still have a strong play to make.
Ken Y-N said,
July 19, 2007 @ 10:53
jim, you’ve got a good point. au’s LISMO project, which allows music to be shared between mobiles and desktops, which is about the closest to an iTunes/iPhone as you get in Japan, is hobbled by needing Check-In/Check-Out of contents, little support for own contents, and other problems arising from over-restrictive DRM implementation.
Jon, good point about the battery, but the iPhone does seem to have a long life compared to Japanese phones, but it’s early days. Look at this survey:
http://whatjapanthinks.com/2007/06/16/mobile-phones-and-batteries-2007-version/
Only 25% of people change dead batteries, most just buy a new phone! However, with a price tag of $500 (55,000 or more yen?) will people be less keen to abandon their iPhone?
Ken said,
July 23, 2007 @ 02:38
As far as I know, Apple and Softbank have already set up a working relationship to explore bringing the iPhone to Japan.
Durf said,
July 23, 2007 @ 19:04
@ Jim: “while you can of course watch tv on a phone in japan, it isn’t as high quality and trouble free as a video ipod…”
But it’s real TV, in real time. If you’re on the train on the way home and you’re missing your favorite show, a one-seg Japanese handset lets you watch it right then and there; your iPhone option is to go home, hope your computer was set up properly to capture the show, do your iPod encoding, and then load the content onto the phone.
A lot of comments like yours, and “TV isn’t so important when you can watch YouTube,” and so on ignore the fact that the one-seg function is totally different from the content-viewing models available to iPhone users. It’s not about the Internet. It’s about freely broadcast TV.
Ken Y-N said,
July 23, 2007 @ 19:07
Durf, thanks for the comments!
In addition, YouTube may work in the States where there is almost always a free WiFi connection somewhere, but in Japan you’re much more limited for connections to leech off.
Golden Swamp » Blog Archive » Carnival of the Mobilists #83 said,
July 24, 2007 @ 02:23
[…] What Japan Thinks Ken Y-N, who blogs on “research Japanese facts and figures through translated opinion polls and surveys” takes eight looks at different reasons why: Apple’s iPhone: Japan will love it, Japan will buy it […]
Golden Swamp » Blog Archive » Test said,
July 24, 2007 @ 02:52
[…] positives about the Apple iPhone pitch, and explores this “revolutionizing branding.” What Japan Thinks Ken Y-N, who blogs on “research Japanese facts and figures through translated opinion polls and […]
Taptology - Taptu’s Mobile Chemistry Blog » Blog Archive » Carnival of the Mobilists #83 said,
July 27, 2007 @ 18:14
[…] Ken Y-N takes a look at how Apple could improve the iPhone to meet the needs of the Japanese market. […]
TMSJ » “iPhone” and “Aiphone” in Japan : Markenrecherchen Japan, Trademark Searches Japan,Apple,iPhone,Japan,Marken,trademarks said,
September 26, 2007 @ 15:49
[…] taking into account Apple’s success in Japan in recent years, Steve Jobs will certainly have a strong incentive to plunge into the art of Japanese negotiation […]
TMSJ » “iPhone” und “Aiphone” in Japan : Markenrecherchen Japan, Trademark Searches Japan,Apple,iPhone,Japan,Marken,trademarks said,
September 26, 2007 @ 16:10
[…] Apples Beliebtheit in Japan in den letzten Jahren kontinuierlich gestiegen ist, dürfte Steve Jobs ein starkes Interesse daran haben, sich vertieft mit der Kunst der japanischen Verhandlungstechnik zu […]
Sunday Reading: What Japan Thinks on the iPhone and Japan : Japan Economy News & Blog said,
December 2, 2007 @ 23:15
[…] Over at What Japan Thinks, Ken Y-N has put together a thoughtful post exploring some of the factors surrounding the iPhone’s potential release in Japan. I agree with Ken that it will be a success in Japan (though we don’t know what Apple would […]
Shawn said,
December 16, 2007 @ 23:22
i definitely think the iphone will be a softbank, simply due to what each of the carriers already offers. Softbank seems to be the most friendly to selling foreign made cell phones, such as nokia and Samsung, and many different models as well, so now all the need is an American brand to match the American actors in there commercials.
The iphone does need to step up it’s feature content and adjust it, but it will sell based on looks. It’s beautiful compared to the brickish phones sold here. Besides Japanese seem to love the ipod, i see so many everyday on the trains, so i think that the iphone would be a natural evolution.
GNU said,
December 22, 2007 @ 22:25
I hope Apple will add SUICA/PASMO/you name it electronic card system to the 3G iPhone in Japan. It will be big here, iPhone’s usability rox!
Chris said,
December 29, 2007 @ 12:24
I think you have pretty much nailed it.
I have been using the iPod Touch keyboard.. and in Japanese.. well it is awful, but then again that could be my terrible Japanese (but I do get that impression from the Apple Store employees… typing in Japanese is no fun on the Touch).
Emoji is a must, as well as
but I wouldn’t be surprised if Apple just does it Apples way.. you want it.. you get what we give you… No Emoji, no felica, no hook strap attachment, no one seg etc…
If however I am wrong and they do release a J. model.. it will be the iphone to own all iphones.
I hope that is the case.
Apple’s iPhone in Japan: latest consumer research results » 世論 What Japan Thinks said,
January 17, 2008 @ 00:02
[…] you want to read more on the iPhone in Japan, please view my article on why Apple’s iPhone will succeed in Japan, or catch up on all past articles on the […]
歩龍 said,
February 7, 2008 @ 20:03
I’m looking forward to the iPhone arriving here, shouldn’t be too long now…
Nice article, thanks. Very well put together & I agree with most of it.
Regarding the browser I doubt very much Apple will provide an alternative & I don’t think its needed either. Safari should display the older mobile sites just as well.
Kboard input could be improved, but I don’t think a 10/12 key is the way. This device is more of a PDA than a traditional phone, so a regular kb is best. If you use a Japanese computer you still have to type YOUBI in English & then select the kanji, there’s little difference other than a slightly unfamiliar interface, but thats true from PC to Mac & for different mobiles anyway.
oh & a place to hang your dice/shisa/hello kitty? - Yeah, ok, if you want. Apples design is a lot better off without it in my opinion. Again, think PDA here rather than mobile phone. It’s more likely to be in your briefcase or suit pocket than in your school backpack.
Ken Y-N said,
February 7, 2008 @ 23:23
Hi 歩龍, thanks! One problem I’ve noticed accessing iMode sites from the PC is that the screen width is all to pot. I think they need some sort of compatibility/emulation mode like Opera has to switch to a fixed-sized width and font.
My argument about the 10/12 key (and the strap hook too) is based around the fact that PDAs are a rare beast indeed in Japan; I don’t think relying on people to upgrade their EMobiles or Palms is going to bring many customers. They will instead be selling to the people spending 50,000 yen plus 10,000 yen per month on a 905i, and these people are used to typing YA-YU-YO A-I-U HA-HI-BI, or indeed YA-YU-YO then down arrow to select from the completion hints.
computer said,
March 20, 2008 @ 20:47
i think iphone will sell and i WILL buy it