• Home
• About/Contact
• Economic Reports
• Research
• Advertising

• Business
• Economics
• Reports
• Finance
• Marketing
• Politics
• Real Estate
• Services
• Retail
• Tech

Subscribe

Sunday Reading: What Japan Thinks on the iPhone and Japan

Back on January 25, we wrote up a review on what was a very poor quality article on the iPhone and Japan that had appeared in the Los Angeles Times.

Not much has been heard in recent months, though the iPhone is still slated to be launched in Japan sometimes next year. 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 define as a success), though there are some shortcomings that need to be dealt with.

First of these would be the fact that the iPhone is a 2G machine, and that won’t fly in Japan. The browser and text input issues (though especially the text input issues) are also important. There’s one other thing that I think must be resolved before the iPhone can be put on sale in Japan, and that is the fact that it currently does not provide support for Flash content.

Over the next year, we’ll see how the iPhone does in Japan, and I think it’s going to do very well. I think other manufacturers need to start counter marketing by naming their own phones, like the Razr and iPhone. Japan’s handset manufacturers have yet to put together the “Air Jordan” handset that would benefit from instant name and visual recognition, and it’s in their interest to do it before the iPhone is launched.

Comments

Copyright © 2006-2008 Japan Economy News

Disclaimer