The Apple *yawn* phone

The Los Angeles Times has a pretty good article on the iPhone’s reception in Japan, which to date has been almost no response at all: “In Japan, barely a ripple.” There are a number of reasons why this product announcement just isn’t important in this market, and the article touches on a few of them: phones here already come packed with space-age features, the networks here are already faster than anything the iPhone will run on.

I like the look of the interface on Apple’s new toy. Very slick. Tight integration with the Macs in my life would be nice to have, too. Beyond that, though, this thing does nothing for me . . . I don’t need a PDA, it’s too large to use comfortably as a cellphone, its capacity is anemic compared to the 60GB iPod I already wander around with, I have a better camera. Oh yeah, and it’s a GSM phone that won’t work at all in this country.

Softbank’s Son Masayoshi is off in America now, attending MacWorld (maybe the CES show too?), which leads to rumors that maybe someday his company will be the one to bring the Apple phone to Japan’s market. Who knows? Maybe a few years down the road there’ll be a third-gen iPhone in my pocket that can actually deal with the 4G networks in operation in Japan by then.

That gives me a few years to work on meeting more people I might want to call. Bonus!

01/12/2007 | tech | Comments

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