“People [are] waiting in queue to get iPhone today in some of the SoftBank stores in Tokyo because SoftBank has started giving away 8GB iPhones to customers who sign a two year contract,” Nobuyuki Hayashi reports via his blog, nobilog returns.
Yes, Nobuyuki Hayashi is the same man quoted by Brian X. Chen in his hit-piece and/or hit-whoring piece for Wired today that’s headlined, “Why the Japanese Hate the iPhone.”
It seems Chen used an old article to quote Hayashi thusly, “Hayashi’s cellular weapon of choice? A Panasonic P905i, a fancy cellphone that doubles as a 3-inch TV. It also features 3-G, GPS, a 5.1-megapixel camera and motion sensors for Wii-style games.”
The none-too-happy Hayashi reports, “My cellular weapon of choice, of course is an iPhone… I can’t agree with what Brian’s article had to say and here is how I view the iPhone market in Japan.”
Read Hayashi’s full article here.
iPhone Mattters today also has a related report, “The Japanese hate the iPhone so much they start four iPhone magazines.” Read it here.