Needed a break and hooked up with some friends in Japan. While the visit was a leisure pursuit, it gave me the opportunity to do some iPhone field research as well. After all, PhotoNote is selling better in Japan than anywhere else. This was my third visit to Japan, so I more or less knew what to expect, but as it turns out the country is still full of surprises.

First observation: The complete absence of wifi. I was on a foreign SIM-card and did not want to incur outragous roaming charges, so needed to rely on wifi for my broadband fix. Normally, in any city in the US or most cities in Europe , you open up the wifi finder and you’ll hit 10-20 networks. Still a challenge to find one that will work, but at least you’ve got options. Here, mostly nothing, nada, zero wi-fi. Didn’t matter if you were in a residential street, an apartment building, a shopping street or a mall. Keep the wifi finder open and maybe you would find 1 new network every 2 blocks. Weird.

Second observation: The Japanese are not yet addicted to broadband. Admitted, I’m a broadband junkie. But so are many of the people I know. We’ve gotten so used to obiquous broadband, that there’s always something to do, someone to contact, something to check. This, in my view, is one of the reasons the iPhone is doing so well. It brought the internet into our pockets in a portable and user-friendly format We don’t really care if it’s called wifi, edge or 3g, it’s always-on Internet. The Internet dial-tone as it was called when I was working at Cisco.
But in Japan, it seems people have not yet taken on the broadband addiction. My host for instance had an internet connection, but no wifi for me to hook into. He only turned on his laptop when he needed it. This seemed to be common. When there is a pc in the house, it tends to be a pc or laptop in a dedicated corner. Not an always on, always carried from couch to kitchen-table device. Don’t quite understand why, the Japanese have many other addictions and this one would seem to fit nicely. But no, broadband internet is not one of them, yet.

Third observation: iPhones have not reached a critical mass. My plan was to look on the street, in trains, subways, restaurants and to peak over people’s shoulders, just to see what apps they were using on their iPhone. That could provide me with inspiration for new apps. I was very observant, kept my eyes open and guess what: in 1 week I only spotted 5 iPhones. Granted, I didn’t spend any time in Tokyo and limited time in Osaka. And of course I’m not counting the dozens of iPhones I saw in the Apple store in Nagoya. But still, only a handful of iPhones in a week. In Japan! How is that possible?

Fourth observation: I watched many people on the trains and many of them were wearing the all-too-familiar white earbuds. At the same time they were frantically emailing on their (mostly clamshell) phones. In other words, they were using and carrying an iPod AND a phone. It appears that the people have not yet converted to the idea that the two can easily be one.

Fifth and final observation: most Japanese are not yet beyond email/txt on their phones. I already noticed this 5-6 years ago on my first visit to Japan. And it really doesn’t seem to have changed. Everyone has a fancy phone, most with a decent data connection, but they don’t seem to use it beyond txt or email messaging.

This could be why the iPhone is not popular yet in Japan. Japanese are not broadband junkies yet and it’s true distinguishing feature, broadband in your pocket, would not really be used. In the crowd of fancy phones that the Japanese want and expect, the iPhone would feel like an overpriced and under-featured (i.e. the crappy camera) phone. The 3G S plays a bit of catch up but it’s probably not enough to provide the momentum.

So I guess it’s up to us developers to create apps dedicated to a Japanese audience that uniquely use the iPhones’ capabilities, tap into Japans unique cultural context and create so much excitement that everyone will want an iPhone. Peer-to-peer pachinko anyone?