iPhone 3G Price Plan Restructuring In Japan: Told You They Would Hate It!
There is one thing about Japan, companies will splinter their spine bending over to accommodate this toughest of nuts to crack.
Xbox controllers to big for your hands? Fine, we’ll make another. PS3 too expensive? Okay, we’ll slash the prices by 20%! Now is the turn of Apple’s iPhone 3G to start making some drastic changes to appeal to the canny Japanese buyer.
Data plans too expensive? Okay, we’ll drop them from a minimum spend of ¥5,985 to ¥1,695 a month! Your exchange rate knowledge may not be extensive, but rest assured that this is a significant price drop of about £28 to £8 in normal money. Softbank have taken a huge risk to release the iPhone 3G in Japan, and as such are taking great steps to make the device seem appealing to those raised on bleeding edge mobiles like the Sony Bravia SO906i.
Cutting down the data charges makes the overall monthly line rental far more appealing to the regular phone buyer, as opposed to the hardcore ‘otaku’ that camped out a few weeks ago to secure one. Seems like our reservations on iPhone popularity in Japan based upon that survey are bearing out a little..
Now the initial excitement has died down all that’s left is an expensive phone which can’t display emoji, or let scary people take surreptitious upskirt pictures. Also the lack of a hoop for trinkets…commercial suicide.
Give me a phone that I can use to buy Pocari Sweat or pay for my pachinko habit any day.
Source: CrunchGear
[...] It will be interesting to see how the interface is tailored to the Japanese, if at all, as they seem not to be awfully fond of touchscreen phones… [...]