Bleh. I guess you can't expect too much from a publication associated with TechCruch.
As I said over there:
1) There's no stats, so how can they claim it's not selling well.
2) There are many iPhone apps developed by the Japanese, that would suggest that the phone is selling at least moderately well. (IMO)
With that said, the iPhone is not as special for the Japanese, as their phones have been very advanced for a long time — although perhaps not to the level of usability that iPhone reached.
There are no "official" numbers -- presumably those only come directly from Apple -- but that doesn't mean other people aren't tracking sales. As of September, a market research firm indicated the iPhone was selling roughly half as well in Japan as Apple was expecting:
The main reasons for poor sales given in that article are lack of hardware features, lack of emoji (Japanese emoticons), and high price. I believe a software update since then has added emoji, but the price has apparently not changed since August until now, so there is reason to suspect that sales are still slow... especially since Apple is not eager to divulge the numbers.
The number of iPhone apps created by Japanese developers is not necessarily an indicator of popularity in Japan, since many of the apps could have been developed with the intent to eventually sell on the global marketplace (or locally for the iPod Touch).
you don't need stats for this, why are they giving it away for free then? meanwhile here in the US some people bought the 1st iPhone version at a very high price!, is jp a smarter market? maybe!
I'll have to agree Japanese market phones are a lot more advanced than US.
Getting people to upgrade to a cellphone that surfs the web is a significant revenue stream. In the US Apples profit per iPhone is more than it's direct cost to consumers so IMO making it "free" is not that big of a deal. Toss in AT&T's profit and the numbers get insane.
the other thing to keep in mind is that apple makes 30% of every app sold. they can afford to sell the phone for less price up front, if they know they can make that money back by selling apps.
...cost $20 and a one-year contract in Japan, back in 2002. The experience has improved in the last few years.
If you expect web access to be an awesome revelation to the Japanese cell phone market, its something like saying "Hello, Japanese consumer! You may think you have accessed to advanced technology, but check this out: you can MAKE CALLS WITH THIS PHONE! Amazing, isn't it!... Hey, why aren't you buying..."
The iPhone in Japan remains one of the worst phone experiences available on the Japanese market, on just very basic important features.
"push email" is not a concept here, because at least with Docomo and AU, all email already arrives on average within a minute. The iPhone (and Softbank generally) taking 15 minutes and manual checking is a joke.
Signal strength is laughable. Softbank has the worst signal strength of the three major carriers, and then compared to other Softbank handsets the iPhone even gets worse reception still.
Emoji support, even having been added, is not working correctly, as the moji don't look anything like the ones that other handsets use, so you have no idea what the person originally sent you.
Email is not searchable, yet most japanese people use their keitai as their primary email reading device.
These issues may all be entirely Softbank's fault, and nothing to do with the device, but there is no non-Softbank iPhone.
As I said over there:
1) There's no stats, so how can they claim it's not selling well.
2) There are many iPhone apps developed by the Japanese, that would suggest that the phone is selling at least moderately well. (IMO)
With that said, the iPhone is not as special for the Japanese, as their phones have been very advanced for a long time — although perhaps not to the level of usability that iPhone reached.