iYawn
Bruce Wallace at LA Times describes why Japanese consumers might not be so impressed by the new iPhone. The iPhone is 'business as usual' in a country where the mobile features announced by Steve Jobs and Apple already are so advanced.
In Japan, barely a ripple
"Every once in a while, a revolutionary product comes along that changes everything," Jobs said as he unveiled the iPhone on Tuesday at the Macworld Conference & Expo in San Francisco.
But the revolution is already well underway in Japan, where cellphones are used for everything. Besides downloading music and surfing the Net, Japanese use their cellphones to navigate their way home by global positioning system, to buy movie tickets and to update personal blogs from wherever they are.
They have been a natural extension of daily life here for the last few years, spurred by Japan's decision to be the first country to upgrade to third-generation mobile-phone networks, or 3G, which increase broadband capabilities and allow for better transmission of voice and data.
Apple's iPhone, by comparison, will operate on a second-generation network.
It was 3G that sparked the boom in music downloads that makes it common for phones to be used as portable digital music players here.
And it is 3G that has led the Japanese into a world where they can watch live TV on their phones and use them as a charge card to ride trains or buy milk at the corner store or take a taxi. Ticket Pia, Japan's major entertainment ticketing agency, has been selling e-mail tickets to cellphones since October 2003. The phones also can be used to conduct conference calls among as many as five people. Another widely used 3G feature enables users to point cellphone cameras at bar codes and be directed to websites.
In Japan, barely a ripple
"Every once in a while, a revolutionary product comes along that changes everything," Jobs said as he unveiled the iPhone on Tuesday at the Macworld Conference & Expo in San Francisco.
But the revolution is already well underway in Japan, where cellphones are used for everything. Besides downloading music and surfing the Net, Japanese use their cellphones to navigate their way home by global positioning system, to buy movie tickets and to update personal blogs from wherever they are.
They have been a natural extension of daily life here for the last few years, spurred by Japan's decision to be the first country to upgrade to third-generation mobile-phone networks, or 3G, which increase broadband capabilities and allow for better transmission of voice and data.
Apple's iPhone, by comparison, will operate on a second-generation network.
It was 3G that sparked the boom in music downloads that makes it common for phones to be used as portable digital music players here.
And it is 3G that has led the Japanese into a world where they can watch live TV on their phones and use them as a charge card to ride trains or buy milk at the corner store or take a taxi. Ticket Pia, Japan's major entertainment ticketing agency, has been selling e-mail tickets to cellphones since October 2003. The phones also can be used to conduct conference calls among as many as five people. Another widely used 3G feature enables users to point cellphone cameras at bar codes and be directed to websites.
Comments
I even give "the stink eye" (as they say in Hawaii) to the regular telephone on my wall (though K would never let me dump that). I see people driving cars, bicycling, walking down the street, in the train, wherever, with a mobile phone glued to their ear or text messaging or playing games. Do these people think they are experiencing life? What are they experiencing? It is like candy for the "monkey mind" that is always jumping around to anywhere but the present moment.
Or as Frank Lloyd Wright called television: "chewing gum for the eyes".
Email on the other hand is great. Like postal mail, I don't have to read it or answer it until I choose to.