“The iPod and iPod mini are being bought by precisely those consumers who buy well-designed fashion and luxury brands or who prefer a Mercedes over a Nissan – and that’s a lot of consumers in Japan. Nowhere else in the world are the fashion values of a product as important. Other markets can claim to be the largest in terms of units of apparel, accessories, and cosmetics sold but Japan is, and will remain for many years, the largest fashion market. As designers of clothes, accessories, furniture, bags and of course consumer gadgets will tell you, their most appreciative fans are almost always Japanese. Not everyone here will buy an iPod but it will dominate the market in terms of mind share because Apple has created a consumer technology brand as compelling as Louis Vuitton has for fashion. Other products will surely follow from Apple that take advantage of this factor as much as the company’s ability to produce new technology,” JapanConsuming writes.
Full article here.
Why do we need to read everyday about how great the ipod is. This forum is mainly for mac fans who believe in Apple’s creativity. Thus, I don’t see the objectivity nor the relevance of articles like this one.
Is this making us a bunch of people talking all the time about things we all agree on already?
iPod is the best, we know it, we do. The world knows already. Move on now, focus on something better and more creative now.
I bloody hate Louis Vuitton. It’s just plain expensive and also unnecessarily showy. It’s an insult to my iPod to compare the two.
As far as I know, there aren’t cheap knock off imitations for �25 at the local market either, so that people can pretend to have a luxury they can’t afford to impress their friends.
Grrr.
This is a very lame comparison, by an article writer who plainly resents the Japanese public’s preferance of the iPod over Japanese brands. iPod wins over its competitors in FUNCTIONALITY, as well as looks.
Ooops, should’ve read the full article before commenting. The quote pulled here is the only part where the emphasis is almost exclusively on style–the rest is quite thoughtful and emphasizes that style is married to excellent functionality.
Good piece.
Boeing777,
It’s the dog days of summer. You post everything you can find that is even remotely related to Apple.
I’m sure MDN would post more Mac news if there was more to print. Lately, the press seems to be obsessive over the iPod and it’s success. Again, don’t forget that all of this good press over the iPod means bigger mind share for Apple, and that will translate into switchers to the Mac (as it is just beginning to do now). So yeah, there’s a lot of iPod news…and I personally believe that means there’ll be more Mac news down the road.
Can this be real? Two of my favorite products in the same headline?
Oh, and Hywel, cheap imitations only impress those who don’t know better. In much the same way that people who don’t know better might see someone with a Dell DJ thingy and mistake it for an iPod. We know better of course.
Cheap imitations look perfectly good from a distance. It’s only close up that you’d ever know, and even then only if you knew what tyou were looking for. So it’s not the same as a Dell DJ at all, which looks entirely different. That’s like saying someone thought the Citroen was a Merc.
What bothers me about LV and others is the way they plaster their names over everything. They’re shouting that they’re LV. But I automatically assume that it’s not real LV, but a cheap imitation and then think less of the people who are using them because they’re pretending to be something that they’re not.
The only way you’d be pretending with an iPod is if you were ‘wearing’ it without listeining to it or charging it or managing to get some tunes onto it.
I have no problems with good design or quality manufactuuring. I appreciate that these are sometimes expensive. But I detest the ‘designer’ tag that is meant to mean quality but in fact means stupid people paying more shoddy goods with a known name.
LV stuff does seem overpriced.
My mom really likes her LV bag, though.
She got it when I was a toddler.
I’m 36.
Overpriced? I dunno–is $1,000 today a lot of money for a bag that can reasonably expected to still be in good shape in 2040?
You’re talking about Louis Vuitton from a utilitarian standpoint, not really as a fashion item. I understand that. Louis Vuitton would have been hardly known at all 36 years ago, being exclusive by nature of it being expensive and being expensive because it was genuinly good quality.
Its brand value has been the victim of the counterfeiters, but also of its own marketing, by displaying its logo so prominently that has compounded the problem. It’s not necessarily their fault, but they should really consider being a little more discreet now that they’ve been outed by the bling bling brigade as an aspirational brand.
So it’s not Louis Vuitton per se that I despise, but Louis Vuitton as a symbol of rabid uncontrolled and crass consumerism. (Add the shameless whoring of names in Pretty Woman’s better living through brands Rodeo Drive scene).
Add to that any ‘designer’ that adds their name to inappropriate products, especially watches, which really annoys me. I would rather have a �50 Accurist or Sekonda or bloody Timex than a �150 Calvin Klein watch or a �500 Dior or whatever. Call me old fashioned, by I want my watch made by a watch maker and style by a watch designer, not by someone who’s famous for dressing nicotine addicted stick insects.