12/19/2009

Japan ‘rub’ iPhone/iTouch

Japan is in rub (love) the iPhone/iTouch, despite all the pooh-poohing of the polls, press and pundits such as:

• Wall Street Journal: iPhone Sees Slow Japan Sales
• Nikkei:Survey: 91% of Japanese Will Not Buy ‘iPhone’
• Wired.com: Why the Japanese Hate the iPhone
• whatjapanthinks.com: iPhone R.I.P. (because of no Japanese emoticons)

Obviously the polls, press and pundits got it all wrong—The charts below say it all.

iPhone, iPod Touch Growth Exploding Internationally
AdMob via businessinsider.com: Dec. 18, 2009
Apple’s (AAPL) devices are growing like a weed in Japan, according to new data from mobile ad firm AdMob….more...

Posted by Taro in Business News, Electronics, General, Internet | 4 Comments »

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1. KeitaiGoddess Says:
   December 19th, 2009 at 5:05 pm

   Been doing some sleuthing since the release of iPhone in Japan. This is very unscientific and just looking at percentage of iPhones in the train carriage on my ride to work in the morning.

   Around the initial release date, I would see about 1-2 iPhones per carriage.. now it is up to about 1 in 10 people per train carriage using an iPhone. This is in less than 2 years.

   Not sure on the average number of people per carriage though – is it 100 people on average?

2. Taro Says:
   December 19th, 2009 at 7:05 pm

   I bow to your superior knowledge, KeitaiGoddess-sama.

   Last Friday, I was was drinking with the folks in SoftBank’s iPhone marketing division at their bonenkai. They said they considered the initial iPhone launch in Japan as a solid double–a two base hit using the baseball metaphor. And now they feel that they are bringing in homeruns with the bases loaded.

3. Taro Says:
   December 19th, 2009 at 8:37 pm

   Now Slashdot has picked up this story. A few of the smart-snarky comments are…
   

   v(*_*)vvvv wrote:
   Average Japanese phones are smart enough that smart phones are very unpopular in Japan. People who need to do more than surf and email carry laptops, and more recently “netbooks.”
   Also most people prefer the keypad over a keyboard for entering Japanese into their phones. This is just how Japanese is. So all those keypad phones are also unpopular.

   Engadget: Mobile provides a better perspective:
   iPhone nabs 46 pecent of Japanese smartphone market, the tiny Japanese smartphone market

4. Yokohama-san Says:
   December 27th, 2009 at 11:16 pm

   Well, if this helps, in my foreign language class, there are only 4 out of 30 students who don’t have an iPhone..

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