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iPhone isn’t turning Japanese anytime soon – Survey shows 91% of Japanese don’t care about iPhone 3G

By: , IntoMobile
Wednesday, June 18th, 2008 at 5:57 PM

In a country full of mobile devices that can pay for your food, let you watch live TV, surf the web at broadband speeds, and even wash your clothes (ok, maybe not), it’s not too surprising to hear that less than one-tenth of the Japanese population is interested iniPhone 3G snatching up an Apple iPhone 3G.

The iPhone 3G is slated to launch simultaneously in a couple dozen countries on July 11, Japan included. And, that means there are going to be surveys cropping up that attempt to project real-world demand for the iPhone 3G.  The latest such survey, conducted by iSHARE, showed that, out of 402 Japanese internet users aged 20-49 years old, a whopping 91% indicated that they could care less about the iPhone.

iSHARE’s survey was conducted after SoftBank’s announcement that the iPhone would be coming to Japan, but before the iPhone 3G’s official unveiling at the Apple WWDC 2008, so the survey results could be slightly skewed by the first-generation iPhone’s lacking feature-set. The iPhone 3G’s more rounded and extensive spec-sheet could appeal more to the same surveyed demographic – although iSHARE conjectures that the non-removable battery could be a weak-point for the iPhone 3G.

[Via: TechOn]

About The Author

Will Park

Will hails from The City of Angels - Los Angeles, California. He spends his time playing with his numerous gadgets and looking forward to seeing what future holds for mobile technology. An avid promoter of a fully "digital" life, he promotes the widespread adoption of truly mobile, paper-less living. He dreams of the day when he can go completely digital. No more snail mail, paper receipts, bound books, notepads/spiral notebooks, credit cards, hard currency. He's a digital warrior - fighting for the converged life. He is an idealist and a realist - he has a perfect view of what the world should be but knows that the world is not perfect. Can we ever hope to see Will's dream become reality? We'll see...

  • Robert

    And of course, we can’t forget how the iPhone won’t do the simple tasks of recording video and using MMS to send and receive pictures and video! It was a huge let down to find out that the new 3g iPhone still won’t do this and that they are raising the monthly price and not including the 200 text messages that the previous iPhone included! So disappointing, indeed! No wonder the Japanese have no interest.

  • Spfreely

    Also, Japanese phone are a lot smarter and stronger then the iPhone 3G…

  • Alexander Muse

    According to the study Apple will sell 8 million iPhones in Japan next year. That is a huge number. I can’t believe the negative spin!!!

  • Chris P

    iphone 3g is still quite dissapointing, I really didnt want to say it. Lack of video recording/poor camera, lack of adobe flash (for the moment) and only 16gb memory (I say only as without removable storage 16gigs really isnt much music/video) makes for a not such a hot product unforunately.

  • Zak

    I agree with chris p