
Apple Finds Surprising Growth Market in Japan - kposehn
http://online.wsj.com/news/article_email/SB10001424052702304672404579185940386164788-lMyQjAxMTAzMDAwNzEwNDcyWj
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patio11
"World's second largest economy discovered to contain money" is at least
better than "Japan will never use the iPhone because they're inscrutable
nationalists." (Take note, anyone who thinks "Samsung is Korean. Have you
heard about Japan and Korea?" is sage commentary.)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=497069](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=497069)

~~~
rurounijones
Addendum to your statement "Worlds second largest economy with a super fashion
(younger)/status (older) obsessed population buys from company known to be
high-end and fashionable."

~~~
threeseed
Don't forget that Apple has had a pretty stunning retail store in Ginza for
nearly a decade now alongside LV, Prada, Chanel etc.

[http://www.apple.com/jp/retail/ginza/](http://www.apple.com/jp/retail/ginza/)

~~~
mbesto
And now have Angela Ahrendts (former Burberry CEO) at the helm of retail. Very
smart move.

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bni
Always in these kind of articles they have to write that people choosing Apple
are drones that only buy couse of the high status of the Apple brand.

It can never be that iPhones actually work consistently and have software that
is not "mixed up" by carriers and Android-vendors. Could it be that the iPhone
is a good product that makes people choose it? Its offensive.

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preemrust
Large Japanese cities have busy Apple stores too. Besides one to one
consultation, they run regular lectures on iPhone and iPad productivity. I
think people feel happy being Apple customers. My wife is Japanese and she
like Apple's FaceTime more than the Google equivalent because it does not
force her to join a social network. Many Japanese are not too keen on creating
accounts on networks. I travel a fair bit in Asia and I see slivers of same
trend. As people in India, China and Indonesia etc. get busier they will move
towards products that are perceived to be simpler and less distracting.

~~~
akg_67
Actually, during recent visit just a few weeks ago, I was surprised to find
Apple Store in Sendai and it was busy (in Tokyo, I wouldn't be that surprised
me).

The main difference with phones I noticed between the visit this time and last
year was the popularity of touch phones versus flip phones. A year ago most
phones in subways, I noticed, were flip phones. This year not so much.
Definitely lot of iPhones and Sony xperia.

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hkmurakami
iPhones becoming available from DoCoMo is huge. They are the carrier with the
best signal quality, hands down. You get reception in the middle of remote
mountains with DoCoMo. It's akin to when Verizon started offering the iPhone,
but multiplied by 5x.

Also

 _> One unique factor in Japan is the relatively small presence of Samsung
Electronics Co. 005930.SE +2.10% , the world's largest smartphone maker.
Samsung ranks fourth in Japan behind Apple, Sony and Sharp Corp., in part
because of a Japanese consumer bias that works against many Korean brands._

This can't be understated imo. I have friends in Japan who flat out refuse to
buy Samsung/LG monitors and other products.

~~~
snogglethorpe
> _This can 't be understated_

That's a bit overstated... :]

Japan's phone manufacturers concentrate on the Japanese domestic market, so
there's a great deal more choice in high-quality phones in Japan than in most
other countries.

Samsung is not "special" like Apple is, in that their products aren't higher-
quality / more functional / better designed than the (mostly Japanese)
competition, so there's no real reason why Samsung _should_ be ahead of other
companies. They may have some price advantage, but price is generally less
important in Japan than it is in other countries, and is often rather obscured
in phone contracts. Samsung coming in 4th is actually a vote of confidence.

To the degree there's a bias in Japan against non-Japanese products, I think
it's in most cases less a case of xenophobia, and more simply a higher degree
of trust in Japanese products. This isn't entirely illogical either, as Japan
does have a very good record of building high-quality products. Japanese can
be very, very, picky, about both quality and style. [This is one reason Apple
does very well in Japan.]

~~~
moonfern
Indeed, but I can't help it: Once upon a time Japan had a very good record of
building low-quality products. Iphones are built in China.

------
IBM
I think we'll see the same story in the US after this quarter. Apple was
already making gains in market share in the quarter prior to new iPhones, it
will be a blowout this quarter in comparison.

[http://www.comscore.com/Insights/Press_Releases/2013/10/comS...](http://www.comscore.com/Insights/Press_Releases/2013/10/comScore_Reports_August_2013_US_Smartphone_Subscriber_Market_Share)

[http://www.comscore.com/Insights/Press_Releases/2013/9/comSc...](http://www.comscore.com/Insights/Press_Releases/2013/9/comScore_Reports_July_2013_U.S._Smartphone_Subscriber_Market_Share)

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e2e4
The example in the article mentioned a user getting his first smart phone,
i.e. switching from a "feature phone".

Personally, I've experienced that many people that are getting a 2nd, 3rd
smartphone are switching from iphone to android based phones (mostly by
Japanese manufacturers). Technical functionality-wise iphone lags far behind:
no free digital tv (1seg), no touch-less payment (Felica: could be used as a
train ticket, wallet). e.g.:
[http://www.nttdocomo.co.jp/product/smart_phone/so02f/index.h...](http://www.nttdocomo.co.jp/product/smart_phone/so02f/index.html)

~~~
Xixi
It's hard to draw any conclusion from personal anecdote: where I work it's the
opposite, all my coworkers who had Android smartphones (Samsung and Sony) are
switching to iPhone 5S.

Note that none of them is technically savy at all: they can barely use a
computer, things like Felica are in the realm of science-fiction for them.
They just want a smartphone with a decent camera and Line. By the way that
horribly tacky "gold" iThingy is a killer, everybody wants it (Osaka, probably
different in other cities).

~~~
e2e4
In Tokyo; quite a few people use smartphones's NFC FeliCa (SUICA) as their
train commuting passes (along with the connected payment option):
[http://www.jreast.co.jp/mobilesuica/whats/models.html](http://www.jreast.co.jp/mobilesuica/whats/models.html)

I guess for JR West it might be different.

+1 for pointing out the success of gold iphone in Osaka

agree with regards to making conclusions with regards to personal anecdotes
(hence the disclaimer); interesting to hear that it is different in your area.

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yeukhon
I am fascinated by this news. I watch a lot of Japanese shows (drama, movies
or music video), and it used to be a common thing to see the Japanese using
flip phone like this one [1] or non-western branded computers [2].

Only very recently I see android phones. Actually I met this IBM fellow from
Japan and as a visually impaired user she was using an iPhone.

[1]: [https://typhoon-
production.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/image_at...](https://typhoon-
production.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/image_attachment/image_attachment/731/cellphonenovels.jpg)
[3]:
[http://i1229.photobucket.com/albums/ee463/withsubsplease/scr...](http://i1229.photobucket.com/albums/ee463/withsubsplease/screencaps/dramas/Spring%20Dramas/ItsukaHinoAtaruBashode-01848x480F8A5EC7222-35-32_zpsfd1c30a6.jpg)

~~~
yeukhon
and this is still true even in the hottest drama naoki nakazawa

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tumes
Totally anecdotal and only tangentially related, but I've been to Tokyo three
times since 2009 and the change in availability of American craft beer as well
as Japanese microbrews was honestly staggering. As a Coloradan, it was almost
comical to see so much specialty beer from home so far away.

Soon after returning from my most recent trip, I happened to sit next to an
employee of Left Hand Brewing (Probably the most weirdly ubiquitous Colorado
beer I saw there that trip) during lunch, and it turns out some beverage
exporter pays the freight on the kegs to and from Tokyo just to bring Left
Hand overseas. I have to imagine this marks some sort of change in tastes and
economics, at least in the big city.

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danso
Maybe it's no-duh that Apple would find a growth market in Japan, but just
because its economy is huge doesn't mean that it's inclined to be a "growth"
market for Apple or any other American tech.

And this is basically a non-sequitur, but this line of thinking reminded me of
this article about why fax machines are still big in Japan
[http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/14/world/asia/in-japan-the-
fa...](http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/14/world/asia/in-japan-the-fax-machine-
is-anything-but-a-relic.html)

------
exo_duz
I still remember when the iPhone was first available in Japan. They had to
change a lot just to accommodate the functions.

For example Japan does not use SMS. Only Softbank uses SMS which is why they
are the most popular for foreigners who try to contact overseas. Even then
each SMS overseas costs an average of 105yen (US$1) each. Or with AU/KDDI
which only allows SMS to same network phones.

Japan uses mobile email which is still widely used and Softbank as a result
had to modify iPhone standard systems to allow this.

Saying this my point is that Japan's problem lies with the fact that their
technology is in it's own universe and not available outside. Which is a good
thing and a bad thing. For example, TVs in Japan cannot be used overseas,
their phone systems use WCDMA which cannot be used overseas. When Japan was
the centre of the technology world this was good because the world had to try
to follow them. Now that they aren't they have to be able to adapt so that
their technology legacy will survive the future changes from overseas.

Here's hoping that the turn in people's thinking might help Japan get out of
their technology downslide.

~~~
w1ntermute
> Japan's problem lies with the fact that their technology is in it's own
> universe and not available outside.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gal%C3%A1pagos_syndrome](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gal%C3%A1pagos_syndrome)

~~~
exo_duz
So true and so sad. From the great innovator to the follower. I also realised
that the people are quite inflexible and unwilling to change.

The following article explains it so well. Although it's about design/web but
it gives you an insight to how Japanese think.

[http://randomwire.com/why-japanese-web-design-is-so-
differen...](http://randomwire.com/why-japanese-web-design-is-so-different/)

------
victorology
Does anyone know what other markets iOS has a large (30%+) market share? It
seems the U.S. and Japan are two of them.

~~~
mchaver
UK is about 30%, Australia around 28%, China around 20%. US, Japan, China, UK
and Australia were topping iOS App store Revenue in Q3 2013.

[http://blog.appannie.com/app-annie-index-
market-q3-2013/](http://blog.appannie.com/app-annie-index-market-q3-2013/)

~~~
victorology
Thank you for the link! Very useful.

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37prime
"Surprising"?

Incarnations of iPhone had been the top selling phone in Japan for quite some
time.

Anyone remember the headline from Wired "Why the Japanese Hate the iPhone"
([http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2009/02/why-the-
iphone/](http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2009/02/why-the-iphone/))

Media bias goes both ways.

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hclee
It is not just because of service plan resembling US market but Japanese's
favor to Western stuffs. Japanese have been particularly obsessed with
European luxury goods (accessories to bags), western cultures, musics, goods
and whatever the fancy to them. iPhone of course.

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WoodenChair
It's not that surprising. Japan has always been an Apple stronghold... Going
way back into the pre-iMac days

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MilkyCow
if (COOL = Japan && COOL = Apple) {

    
    
       Japan = Apple;
    }

