Apple Finds Surprising Growth Market in Japan | Hacker News Reader

Apple Finds Surprising Growth Market in Japan

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42 pointskposehn36 comments

"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

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nomin... japan is no longer the 2nd largest economy. it's china. (or the US, depending on how you measure such things).

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."

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/

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

Not to mention Japanese handsets suck when it comes to software, and Android is too Korean/Chinese.

Japanese handsets' software does indeed suck however Android dominates the Smartphone market (As per above article) and Samsung has good share of android sales[1] so I think the "anti-korean" thing is being blown out of proportion.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6716190

I've been saying this for years.

Everybody focuses on China because it's such a large market, that they miss the fact that doing business in China is a legal nightmare. The court system is basically set up to screw foreign companies, partially because the Chinese do have a history of getting really screwed over by foreign companies.

Japan doesn't have the same pile of overnight millionaires, but they do have a dependable court system, people are used to paying high prices for things, the consumer is very friendly to foreign goods, and there are relatively few trade barriers -- especially after the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) goes through.

It's not a bad place to sell things.

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.

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.

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.

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.

> 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.]

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.

Samsung Galaxy models are among the most sold android phones in Japan[1] and Samsung is second overall in terms of Android market share.

http://www.insidemobileapps.com/2013/10/30/animoca-releases-...

Docomo is also widely used in Oceania and other pacific island nations

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/2013/9/comSc...

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...

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).

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

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.

your co-workers are cool. I mean I'm not an APPLE fanboy but when I see a new iPhones/iPADs/iPods and iOS apps they are just flat-out COOL! Enough said.

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... [3]: http://i1229.photobucket.com/albums/ee463/withsubsplease/scr...

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

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.

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...

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.

> 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

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...

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

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/

Thank you for the link! Very useful.

I'm guessing Canada (my country) would be one of them. But our population is roughly 10% that of the US's.

"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/)

Media bias goes both ways.

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.

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

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

   Japan = Apple;
}

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