“Two months after its launch, the latest version of Apple Inc.’s iPhone is showing strong sales around the world — except in Japan,” Yukari Iwatani Kane reports for The Wall Street Journal.
“Apple’s partnership with Japan’s third-largest mobile operator, Softbank Corp., to sell the iPhone 3G certainly created a buzz. Like elsewhere, Japanese consumers lined up at stores in advance of the phone’s release on July 11, and many locations sold out almost immediately. But now analysts estimate that demand in Japan has fallen to a third of what it was initially and analysts are now expecting fewer iPhone sales. There is no supply shortage: The device is readily available in Apple and Softbank stores and other outlets,” Kane reports.
“According to market-research firm MM Research Institute, Apple sold about 200,000 phones in Japan in the first two months. Since then, however, demand has been falling steadily, and analysts now widely believe sales are unlikely to reach a total of 500,000 units. That is half the one million units that they previously thought Apple could sell. One big challenge is that Japanese users already have access to some of the most advanced mobile-phone technologies in the world. Models currently sold by Japanese cellphone makers typically contain a high-end color display, digital TV-viewing capability, satellite navigation service, music player and digital camera. Many models also include chips that let owners use their phones as debit cards or train passes. Noriko Tanaka, a 34-year-old Softbank customer in Tokyo, said she likes the iPhone’s touch screen, but would prefer a phone with digital television capability,” Kane reports.
“One iPhone feature that is unique even to Japanese users is the App Store, Apple’s online clearinghouse for software, such as games and reference guides. The App Store is popular among U.S. users, but hasn’t taken hold as much in Japan, where consumers tend to be more cautious about making purchases online,” Kane reports.
Full article here.
What we have here is, a failure to communicate.
Apple needs to create or add more iPhone expository ads and run them with high frequency in Japan; ads that explain the app store, demonstrate 3rd-party apps, and show off what the iPhone, and only the iPhone, can really do.
NO – this is NOT a failure to communicate. The article is very clear and completely to the point: Japanese consumers are used to phones that can do a lot an iPhone as yet cannot. And these capabilities are very important to their lifestyle.
And yes, there’s also things an iPhone can do even japanese phones can’t. And that should be communicated. But in the end it comes down to the fact that the iPhone and the Appstore should mature. Digital TV on an iPhone, why not? Bring it on.
The ability to use your phone as a debit card or train pass sounds great. I’d love to see these features added!
Just stick some novelty crap on it and sales will probably improve at least a little.
Give the buyers what they want. Do it through the App Store if that’s the only way you can.
… or Apple may try to offer these advanced services the Japanese like to Japanese customers and to THE REST OF THE WORLD.
More bullshit articles.
Absolutely no numbers, or proof … just a single analyst guessing.
“The ability to use your phone as a debit card or train pass sounds great.”
That can be done using SMS. In Helsinki you can buy your bus/metro/tram ticket by sending a SMS. You a reply SMS that is your ticket to show.
@pastrychef
yeah until someone steals your phone and purchases a new car or a few new iphones to sell on ebay by the time you have a chance to get to another phone and cancel all your card.
@Lazy European
“high-end color display, digital TV-viewing capability, satellite navigation service, music player and digital camera. “
So the iphone cant watch TV, otherwise it can do the rest of those… So watching TV on the phone is important to their lifestyle…..
Only importance I see is using the chip as a credit card which has many pros and many many cons.
Japan is so far ahead of the rest of the world as far as incorporating technology into their daily lives that we should be embarrassed. Phones as debit cards & train passes? That’s a brilliant idea that will take the U.S. 20 years to adopt.
“Phones as debit cards & train passes” – 2 year old technology here. If the additional technology features found on most phones here were offered in the iPhone, it would help considerably. That and multi-colored iPhones ala iPod Nano. Japanese love their distinct phones.
I’m with Tony – the USA is soooo backwards in so many technologies – mobile telephone and television being the most egregious. In all fairness to the US, it is because many of the technologies were developed here, and so we were stuck with early standards, while the rest of the world waited for better standards to be developed and implemented.
Having been to Asia (but not Japan), I have seen what they use and expect, and it’s not available here in the US. Blame the carriers (carrion?) in part. Also the geographic size and spread of the US creates problems in coverage (iPhone 3G & AT&T;, anyone?).
So not a failure to communicate – Apple did not deliver what Japanese consumers already have and use daily. New features like the App store are great, but without the other features, no sale.
@tony
You are absolutely correct. As I’ve stated before, Apple could use some partners (licensees?) to better advance the platform and to better localize the products.
Japan has a low-crime society, so ‘features’ like buying
tickets with a phone may work.
Japan is also distinct in its habits – nowhere else is quite like Japan.
If the iPhone has sold decent numbers there – thats fine. This analyst isnt being analytical – presumably only Japanese phones with special features do really well there, but the market is not big enough to make a special Japanese ohone, so you take what sales you can.
Looking for a local negative in a VERY positive Worldwide story is my take on this.
Tony,
You wonder why the US is behind technologically?
All of it goes into weapons.
And there are people in the US that think Jesus rode on dinosaurs.
NO amount of technology will solve that. Except maybe using some of those advanced weapon systems to “clear up” the problem.
You guys are all wrong. Japan is behind because they don’t realise the superior products Apple produce.
Why watch TV on a phone when you can purchase content from iTunes, why bother with an inferior service??????
Japan doesn’t like American technology and it’ll end up costing them big when Apple rules the world 😀
“All of it goes into weapons.”
Yeah, but those are some pretty freakin’ talented missiles. I saw one that answers to the name Shirley, tap dances to Yankee Doodle, smells like begonias and runs its own microbrewery next to the PX in Ft. Dix. It even taps you on the shoulder before liquifying a 20 mile radius.
Don’t underestimate Japanese people and their desire for OneSeg cell phone TV service. I’ve been promoting the phone to my Japanese friends but the lack of TV access is the first failing that they point out.
Apple or a third party vendor has to make a OneSeg tuner for the iphone. There are OneSeg tuners here for Mac computers, the Nintendo DS and the PSP.
Also there are no TV shows available on the itunes store in Japan. If there was anyone smart at Apple Japan they should start selling Japanese subtitled Korean and Taiwan soap operas in the itunes stores. That way they’d be able to tap into the housewife demographic in Japan. Most of the housewives I teach and know are obsessed with those import shows.
OneSeg, Phone Wallet, and other ‘advanced’ features in Japan are not that important to most people. Such features are generally driven by push marketing by the large carriers and handset makers in Japan, but not consumer driven. The big problem with the iPhone is email. Word is on the street that the iPhone is hard to type in Japanese. This was definitely true until 2.1. There were often multi-second delays after pressing key combinations before the characters would switch to the appropriate Japanese word. This is a critical feature on phones in the email crazy Japan market.
The good news is that input speed has increased due to improvements in 2.1, but there still could be more improvement. Also, Emoji (character mail) needs to be added, as well. But is not critical…
Yeah; more ads. Maybe they could get Jerry Seinfeld and Steve Jobs to do some ads. That kind of thing worked for Microsoft.
You know.. People in Japan think that their country is the only country in the world that has four seasons.
Think about the arrogance that implies…
Also, not too bright, go along with the group/herd.
(this is from some guy that lives in Japan)
@Redstone: I agree, I don’t think Phone Wallet and some of the other advance features are really that important (they look good on paper though, but I only use the GPS and built in compass on my Casio G’z One) but, at least in my area, OneSeg seems to be a key feature for my students and friends. I don’t watch much Japanese TV myself.
Good point about the character input. I often rely on it to anticipate the kanji I want when messaging my friends. And I’ve even started using the Emoji since young people always use them when sending me mail.
@me
So they should wait for the show to finish and then download it? People here want TV now. I see lots of people on the trains watching baseball and variety shows on their way home at night.
If Japanese character input is bad on the iPhone (w/ no physical buttons, but w/ a big completely software-driven screen), I can only imagine what it must be like on a Blackberry or Treo…
True.
Also the problem lies in SoftBank’s iPhone plan.
They have a plan called the ‘White Plan’ where you pay a basic fee of 980 yen to have unlimited calls from 1AM to 9PM with unlimited emails between SoftBank users. Most Softbank users would contract their phones with this plan to minimize their monthly charges.
With iPhone’s ‘White Plan (i)’, you get the same unlimited calls and unlimited emails. That’s great for iPhone users… However, emails sent from iPhone to non-iPhone SoftBank phones will cause data fees, even if the recipient had White Plan which claims you’d have unlimited emails.
iPhone is seen as a SPECIAL phone because of that.
I can’t remember where the conversation happened but different countries have different ‘musts’ from their phones. 1 example: Japanese love to customize. A place to connect landyards is a must yet that’s not something the iPhone has. Other places in the world, a high quality camera phone is a must. Apple’s focus on 1 product for the entire world isn’t always an advantage.
i read it was more about:
“The 3G iPhone is not able to use pictograms in text messages and emails. This may be a show stopper for the average user as text messaging is far more prevalent then voice calls due to the high cost charged per minute. The ability to convey a message with a single image is significantly faster than typing out the entire word. “
NOT a failure to comunicate.
Seems that this is not a failure of Apple but maybe a failure of Japanese apps developers. It should not be Apple’s responsibility to create every application for every locality , this is why the App store was created. There is already an app extension to listen to over 1000 different digital radio stations. If they are so advanced over there the same can be done for TV and buying train tickets. Who knows these things may already exist or are under development for the Iphone in Japan and maybe we just have a lazy analyst.
I bought an iPhone in Osaka on Saturday evening. The sales assistant said it was her first sale all day. They dropped the minimum data (packet) fee to a little over 1,000 yen so if you don’t use the web over the 3G network much the cost could be as low as 2,324 yen per month (about US $20.00) Did you know you can download YouTube videos with MPEG Streamclip? Check it out. (Just choose Open URL, download as MP4 and then drag the file into iTune. Don’t forget to check it in the Videos tab of your iPhone/iPod before syncing.) As for iPhones not being popular with Japanese, who cares?
Actually the real truth is email is the problem. The iPhone does not support the picture symbols (emoji), does not support MMS, you cannot easily send pictures (have to take a screen shot of the picture you took with the iPhone camera to make the size small enough or it bounces back when sent), cannot select a custom ring tone for mail (the default tone is useless.. you never notice you’ve got mail and Japanese phones all have a little light that blinks every few seconds to let you know you have email).. above and beyond that the input is better with 2.1 but still tough for many people to get used to. I think that if you had what Japanese people consider to be basic features then people would be happy to get used to the touch panel input.
As for TV and using your phone for payment – these are NOT deal breakers for the majority. Email is the killer app in Japan.. people live and die by Email on their cell phone. If it’s not right then it won’t sell except to the computer geeks and older people who don’t care about email so much. The problem is that young people in Japan set the standards and determine what is popular and what is not.
@LostinTranslation
Wow…I didn’t know they dropped the minimum packet fee to just over 1000 yen. I knew they dropped it down to under 3000 yen last month. Hmmm…I was holding out until the price of the 16 GB iphone dropped or they released a 32 GB iphone, but I may just dump my Au phone now!
When Apple adds a feature to the iPhone that facilitates groping of female train commuters, then Japanese businessmen will buy it…
I hate these Japs…they have small d*cks
Wouldn’t it just be simpler if when you bought a iPhone 3G to also bundle a slipcase with a keyring that also had one of those tiny dongles that works as a debit card? I thought the japanese market loved to accessorize their cells with Hi Kitty trinkets and the like.
Remember in one of the Seinfeld episode, Jerry & Gorge tries to sell their shows to Japanese? Japanese dude thinks that they are not funny for them. There is no point in selling US TV shows on itunes.
Say all ya want about Japan being so technically advanced. For just about every point of being “advanced”, I’ll bet I can show you something so bass-akwards you’d be astonished. (70-80 yr old grandmas doing roadside weed cutting is one example)
Lots of commentary here — some insightful and some totally out in left field. Steve Jobs has said that Japan is Apple’s toughest market and the iPhone is a perfect example of what he means. I watch my Japanese students using their cell phones to do just about anything. Until the iPhone can compete at that level, it will continue on as an interesting little conversation piece, but not much else.
Umm…I’ve paid train tickets from my Blackberry for at least 3 years in Germany. And I know that my sis in Stockholm pays most of her movie tickets on her mobile…and has done so forever. These are no future technologies.