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Japan: We're losing to Apple, and here's why

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Re: Japan: We're losing to Apple, and here's why

#31

Post by jayfuerstenberg »

Here in Japan, risk is extremely frowned upon. As a result nothing innovate comes about. Only minor improvements over the existing design.

A lot has been written about the cultural views of risk/failure and why nations like the US are kicking butt over Japan and India where you're not allowed to fail.

Japan has shown that it can stage a comeback when the nation as a whole can no longer deny it has been defeated and must reinvent itself to move forward. It happened after WWII and will likely happen in another 10 or 20 years if things continue the way they have.

Re: Japan: We're losing to Apple, and here's why

#32

Post by kstenerud »

The article kind of misses the point.

The reason why people are leaving the Japanese phones for the iPhone is because Japanese phone interfaces SUCK BALLS. And they have ALWAYS sucked. I suffered through 5 years of one phone after another being such a terrible user experience that I think it scarred me for life. And don't even get me started with Sony, who replaced the perfectly functioning joypad in their phones (which USED to be the best) with that stupid "sony" sidewheel they spent so much money developing and insisted on putting in every product, whether it made sense or not.

The fact remains, emoji ARE important. Easy text input IS important. Being able to pay for stuff at the combini with your phone IS important. It's just that having apps, and a UI that doesn't suck balls is even more important.

iPhone took YEARS to penetrate the Japanese market, precisely because it didn't have the features that customers wanted, and they spoke with their wallets, buying the Japanese models. But now that app and smartphone fever has finally landed, people are more willing to compromise.

But the point is, they SHOULDN'T have to compromise. That's just Apple deciding what people will use, even if it's the wrong thing. It's taking a little bit of good advice to such an extreme that what appears on the surface "visionary" would upon closer inspection reveal itself as insanity. Hubris has a way of creeping up on you when your power remains unchecked for too long.

Yeah, Sony used to be good, but then again they used to make good products. Once their arrogance got the better of them, their products started to suffer. My first Vaio was awesome. Sleek, light, and fast. My last Vaio was practically useless out of the box. It took me 3 HOURS to remove all the crapware they loaded into it, which slowed it down so badly that it was almost unusable. Oh, and it had that stupid useless Sony sidewheel on it, and their incompatible-because-we-said-so memory stick port too. I shudder to think of how the average user would endure with such a monstrosity.

Re: Japan: We're losing to Apple, and here's why

#33

Post by stevenj »

dantheman wrote: post #23
ilamont wrote: post #16

Nintendo is an interesting case that may dispel some of the stereotypes about Japanese companies and management styles. First, the company is quite old (1889, I believe). It started out manufacturing playing cards, yet had a pretty remarkable evolution after its post-war CEO (a member of the founding family, surnamed Yamauchi) took over. While it was a top-down organization, Yamauchi recognized and encouraged some ou…

I think Nintendo's success primarily has to do with them employing one of, if not, the best game designers that has ever lived - Shigeru Miyamoto. By trusting and empowering him they are able to have taste, just as Jobs's taste defined Apple, Miyamoto's defines Nintendo.

In case you haven't read it yet, this is an interesting piece about Miyamoto:

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/12/20/101220fa_fact_...

Re: Japan: We're losing to Apple, and here's why

#34

Post by rubashov »

shioyama wrote: post #27
flocial wrote: post #22

I read this article and it was interesting. Sony can still make some beautifully designed products and even beat Apple in certain ways, the Vaio X had similar capabilities to the MacBook Air and still much lighter and well-designed. However, the greater issue is not the "design by committee" problem but the fact that the entire country is simply lost and headless. It's not only business but politics and society in ge…

I'm the author/translator of this article. Thanks for your thoughts, which I agree with entirely. I actually think that although the post I translated is interesting, it is in fact missing the point, in a sense. There's a deeper malaise in this country, and although there are bright spots - I'd point to home-grown companies like Cookpad, for example - the overall picture is bleak. However, Japan has a track record of…

The "overall picture is bleak" if you measure societies by flashy, marketable headline developments and gadgets. It is rather good if you more soberly consider household incomes and trade figures. Japan continues to dominate many high tech industries. Look at the 787; over a third of it is made in Japan and it's all the key hi tech bits like the carbon fiber wings.

Japan may indeed be in some sort of withdrawn middle-class ennui. They're still doing better than the US or Europe in most ways that count.

http://www.fingleton.net/?p=919

Re: Japan: We're losing to Apple, and here's why

#35

Post by BadassFractal »

I wonder is part of their failure is from listening to people's reason, such as focusing on the nitty gritty features (see emoji, typing with one hand and so on) rather than on the big picture of the device and how it fits into one's lifestyle.

It's known that humans are ultimately emotional beings, they think with their feelings regardless of how rational they believe they are. The iPhone is the ultimate user experience, titillating the senses and the emotions more than any PDA out there with 1000s of convenience features. It's similar to BMW, Steve Jobs' source of inspiration for his marketing strategies. You want the device on a primal level, it's sexy, it's a status symbol, the release of every iPhone is a cultural event, a celebration of incredible UX.

I never ever get that emotional involvement when looking at the latest super-souped-up swiss-knife phone from Japan.

Re: Japan: We're losing to Apple, and here's why

#36

Post by wh-uws »

dantheman wrote: post #23
ilamont wrote: post #16

Nintendo is an interesting case that may dispel some of the stereotypes about Japanese companies and management styles. First, the company is quite old (1889, I believe). It started out manufacturing playing cards, yet had a pretty remarkable evolution after its post-war CEO (a member of the founding family, surnamed Yamauchi) took over. While it was a top-down organization, Yamauchi recognized and encouraged some ou…

I think Nintendo's success primarily has to do with them employing one of, if not, the best game designers that has ever lived - Shigeru Miyamoto. By trusting and empowering him they are able to have taste, just as Jobs's taste defined Apple, Miyamoto's defines Nintendo.

With my decidedly limited knowledge of Japanese tech out outside of videogames and some phones,

I would say Shigeru is about as close as Japan has to a Steve Jobs

Re: Japan: We're losing to Apple, and here's why

#37

Post by wavephorm »

jbm wrote: post #26
dantheman wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think Nintendo's success primarily has to do with them employing one of, if not, the best game designers that has ever lived - Shigeru Miyamoto. By trusting and empowering him they are able to have taste, just as Jobs's taste defined Apple, Miyamoto's defines Nintendo.

Some of the best graduates from Tokyo University wind up at Nintendo. It was considered one of the best places to get a job. Nintendo is not a company I would want to emulate. It is getting squeezed by Sony and Microsoft, and even its innovations in terms of casual gaming seem to be on the verge of going away. I consider it a colossal waste, but I guess YMMV. Disclaimer: I thought the same when the DS came out. I was…

Sony's network problems will haunt them for years. I think they're done in the game industry. Microsoft is lacking in innovation in every single category I can think of.

This would be the perfect time for Nintendo to crush them both.

Re: Japan: We're losing to Apple, and here's why

#38

Post by shioyama »

rubashov wrote: post #34
shioyama wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm the author/translator of this article. Thanks for your thoughts, which I agree with entirely. I actually think that although the post I translated is interesting, it is in fact missing the point, in a sense. There's a deeper malaise in this country, and although there are bright spots - I'd point to home-grown companies like Cookpad, for example - the overall picture is bleak. However, Japan has a track record of…

The "overall picture is bleak" if you measure societies by flashy, marketable headline developments and gadgets. It is rather good if you more soberly consider household incomes and trade figures. Japan continues to dominate many high tech industries. Look at the 787; over a third of it is made in Japan and it's all the key hi tech bits like the carbon fiber wings. Japan may indeed be in some sort of withdrawn middle…

The malaise comes not from the absolute position of Japanese companies in the world, but from the direction they're headed in.

There was a great article in the Economist a while back about this:

http://www.economist.com/node/14793432

Since this article was published, the situation has gotten worse. The earthquake sure didn't help, but the situation wasn't good even before that. Sure, 10% or something of the parts that go into the iPhone are developed by Japanese specialized parts manufacturers, who have skills that no-one else in the world can match. But if you look more closely, you'll see that these industries are hollowing out -- there isn't enough interest from younger generations to keep the mom&pop shops going in the long run.

The problem which many have mentioned here and elsewhere is that while Japan is unrivalled in craftsmanship ("monozukuri") -- making physical things -- exactly the opposite is true when it comes to "unphysical" things like software. That's why Japanese mobile phones have such utterly terrible interfaces, as someone else pointed out here. There is very little respect given to that side of the design process, and that's not going to change without a major shift of consciousness.

Re: Japan: We're losing to Apple, and here's why

#39

Post by bluedanieru »

One thing he didn't mention that I've noticed is that many Japanese companies, particularly in the consumer electronics space but in other industries as well, maintain completely separate product lines outside Japan vs. what they sell here. This is (or was) especially striking with phones where you simply couldn't buy made-for-Japan mobile phones outside Japan, and likewise you couldn't find non-Japanese phones in Japan. This is why it was such a shock that the iPhone was a success here, and the entire emerging smartphone market caught Docomo and AU completely flat-footed.

There is a particularly irritating component of Japanese nationalism which holds that Japanese are unique, as in physiologically unique, among the world's population (down to having different immune systems, in fact). In seems natural for a Japanese company that it would essentially have to act as two companies, one for exported products and another for domestic ones. It's very inefficient. It's also remarkably stupid as the iPhone demonstrates - what sells anywhere else will also sell here, and vice versa (I would always get comments on my phone when I went overseas and had to tell people the model was only available in Japan, to their disappointment).

Contrast this with most other large manufacturers where they will have more-or-less the same products globally, with some localization.

Actually the solution for Japan is rather obvious and I suspect many know it: stop acting as though you're an alien race crash-landed on planet Earth a thousand years ago. Start treating the global market the same as the domestic one, and Japanese the same as Korean, Swedish, Canadian, whatever. This will be a hard lesson for the Japanese national psyche to digest, and I don't know that they're up for it. It's entirely plausible they'll spend the next 50 years making stunning breakthroughs in the fields of (nursing home) robotics and new delivery mechanisms for god-awful Japanese broadcast television.

Re: Japan: We're losing to Apple, and here's why

#40

Post by latch »

wavephorm wrote: post #37
jbm wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some of the best graduates from Tokyo University wind up at Nintendo. It was considered one of the best places to get a job. Nintendo is not a company I would want to emulate. It is getting squeezed by Sony and Microsoft, and even its innovations in terms of casual gaming seem to be on the verge of going away. I consider it a colossal waste, but I guess YMMV. Disclaimer: I thought the same when the DS came out. I was…

Sony's network problems will haunt them for years. I think they're done in the game industry. Microsoft is lacking in innovation in every single category I can think of. This would be the perfect time for Nintendo to crush them both.

How xbox 360 escaped the ring-of-death is baffling to me. I guess the $1billion hit they took to extend warranties either really spoke to consumers, or people just don't care if they have a 1 in 3 (or was it 1 in 4?) change of getting a dud.
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