iPhone 5 - Whoop De Doo
Someone recently complained that I haven't written anything here recently. I suppose I am just not vain enough to assume people want to read. Likewise, despite the "on technology" heading, this isn't a gadget blog where I intend to comment on every new toy that comes to market.
Still, you asked...
Then several people asked me what I thought of the iPhone 5. Why? I have no idea.
So here goes: In the eyes of American consumers, the iPhone was the first smartphone, and the first phone with web, email, etc. - so they will hold the latest iPhone up as the golden standard by which other phones are judged - even when it's not appropriate to do so. It seems this behavior can't be trained out of them short of extensive beating, so I will placate their wishes by talking about the iPhone.
Here in Japan, Apple's products are popular, because consumers have the money to spend on them. They also seemed to have reached market saturation. Everyone who wants an iPhone probably has 1, or maybe even 3 by now.
In Japan...
In Japan, before Apple and Android, there had been phones for a long while with email. In fact, email was a super standard feature. Not just email, but DecoMail with smileys, other icons, and animated flash templates - and of course proper Japanese support. Phones had IR that let you beam contacts (Including kanji names, email addresses, phone numbers, etc.) between them simply and easily. Phones had 1Seg TV, which didn't rely on internet, but was just regular digital TV adapted for small screens. Phones had "Osaifu Keitai" (Wallet phone), that let you pay for purchases and ride the train by touching your phone to the cash register or ticket gate. They had "TV Call" video calls, QR Code readers for entering URLs, "Veil View" to keep people next to you on the train from reading your mails, very good cameras (for phones), pedometers for measuring how much you walk, etc. I could go on, but the point is that Japanese "dumb phones" were pretty smart, much smarter than those in the rest of the world. These kinds of advanced-but-not-smartphone phones are typically called "Feature phones" in general in English, and "Galapagos Keitei" in Japan. (Referring to the fact that they were customized for this island).
Enter iPhone/Blackberry
So Japanese phones had a lot of features found *only* on Japanese phones - and the iPhone (and Blackberry) have none of those features. What they do have, though, is PC features. The iPhone's real breakthrough was that it was good at viewing not special mobile sites, but regular PC web sites. The Blackberry's was that it was good at PC email and could open and view PC attachments. Galapagos keitai weren't good at complex PC web pages or handling stuff like Spreadsheet attachments.
Blackberry entered first, only on Docomo's network, and only really for business users. The first generation iPhone wouldn't work in Japan since there was only 3G coverage, but when the iPhone 3G was offered, it sold like hotcakes to a hungry waiting crowd of people with money who like to follow trends. And let's face it, the iPhone was cool. You could open real web sites with it, and read real "computer" emails with attachments and stuff.
And then Android entered the market.
"Real Apps"
But more than just browsing web pages, what really made people like the iPhone and Android by the time the 3GS hit the market was all of the applications users could download and install. Technically, the Galapagos keitai (Japanese feature phones) did have applications, but accessing them was a bit of a pain. You would go to the special applications menu, and pick which one you wanted to run. You would wait about 30 seconds while Java fired up, and the application would load. The screen size was sometimes mismatched, or the resolution odd, and sometimes the processing was a bit slow and laggy but it worked well enough for some applications. Japan Rail's Mobile Suica recharge application (used to recharge the account balance for your train pass) is implemented this way, and worked more than well enough. But stuff like Google Earth? Unlikely.
The Dilemma
Then people who bought the iPhones started to notice that they worked more like office computers than Japanese Phones. "How come this thing doesn't have TV?", people asked, and so Softbank Mobile rushed a 1Seg TV accessory for the iPhone to market. "Why can't I read the DecoMail from my friends?", people asked, and a number of special Japanese email apps entered the market. People said "Man I wish this had Osaifu Keitai", and someone came up with an iPhone case that can hold train pass cards. "Hey this thing has a camera, why can't it do TV Call?", people asked. Eventually Apple came out with their own proprietary video call software, but it's not compatible with other phones - much as none of the iPhone technology is. One of the simplest and most irritating drawbacks was not having IR to send your contact information to another phone. You would meet someone at a party, and they would say "Let's exchange info!", and they would fire up the IR option, while you held your expensive "advanced" iPhone and had to sheepishly say "uhm.. my phone can't do that, can you just type in all that stuff including your purposely difficult email address?" Meanwhile, the iPhone's Japanese input software is somewhat primitive compared to state-of-the-art alternatives on other phones, and there is no way to add new input software to the iPhone, just as there is no way to modify most of how the operating system works.
Yes, people faced a dilemma. Give up all of their Japanese phone features to get more PC like features, or stick with what they know and want and forgo the smartphone fun. This is why some people upgraded, and some people didn't. (Of course many people simply kept one of each!)
Then something happened - Japanese makers got an idea. They could make their own Smartphones, and add Japanese feature phone features. One of the first was Sharp's "Galapagos" 003SH model. It has a great screen, but otherwise the basic specs sucked. The flash memory was too small, the memory was too small, and the processor was too slow. In fact, it was slow at everything except watching TV - but it could watch TV! And it could do IR contact transfer. And it could be used as a train pass. And it came with very good (and expensive) Japanese to English dictionaries that will cost you about $50 extra to buy for iOS. And it came with Japanese input software better than the iPhone's, plus a 3D screen to boot. The phone sucked in some ways, particularly the way that the home screen seemed to take 10 minutes to appear - but it was a proof of concept. The other Japanese makers got involved, and now everyone from Fujitsu to Sony makes phones with all the Japanese goodies. In fact, even Samsung started "Japanizing" their phones. The Japanese version of the Note II, for example, has Osaifu Keitai instead of NFC, and can handle 1Seg TV. (The Note is interesting, since the stylus allows for unique input opportunities with Japanese).
So now you don't need to choose, you can have a smartphone that also has Japanese features.
What about the iPhone 5? Uhm, well... no. nothing. It's a little taller than the iPhone 4, and a bit faster. That's about it. Still no Japanese features. Those people who didn't need the Japanese features will already probably have an iPhone 4 anyway. Even many of them are starting to think "Well now with the new Japanese smartphones, I can have my cake and eat it too...", and the iPhone is looking less attractive.
Outside Japan
Ok, so I explained the situation in Japan pretty well above - but what if you aren't in Japan? You don't care about 1Seg TV or Osaifu Keitai because those features wouldn't work where you are anyway. Or maybe you are in Japan, but like most foreigners in Japan, you have no idea what any of those features mentioned above are or how to use them. You could care less about Japanese input features, etc.
So let's just compare global models.
Obviously, the iPhone does have some advantages.
Yet there are many disadvantages as well:
These are all from the consumer's standpoint, but from a manufacturer's standpoint, things are not any better. If you want to make something other than a phone. Whether you want to make a robot, a dashboard computer, a navigation system, a smart camera, etc., you might love to use iOS - but you can't. Apple won't license it to you. So you either somehow retrofit an iPod touch into your design, or you abandon your project. Or, you just use Android. Surprise, surprise, there are now cameras running Android from Nikkon and Samsung.
There is more variety of Android handsets, so even forgetting about the Japanese hardware, there are just a lot more choices for someone when they go with Android. There are small phones like the Sony Mini for people who want something that size, and there are monsters like the Galaxy Note as well. There are Android phones with keyboards, with stylus drawing, with two screens, flip-phone clamshell style phones, phones with superior cameras, etc. With the iPhone, there's just... the iPhone.
Upgrade?
Now let's look at the iPhone 5 from the various users' perspectives:
Still, you asked...
Then several people asked me what I thought of the iPhone 5. Why? I have no idea.
So here goes: In the eyes of American consumers, the iPhone was the first smartphone, and the first phone with web, email, etc. - so they will hold the latest iPhone up as the golden standard by which other phones are judged - even when it's not appropriate to do so. It seems this behavior can't be trained out of them short of extensive beating, so I will placate their wishes by talking about the iPhone.
Here in Japan, Apple's products are popular, because consumers have the money to spend on them. They also seemed to have reached market saturation. Everyone who wants an iPhone probably has 1, or maybe even 3 by now.
In Japan...
In Japan, before Apple and Android, there had been phones for a long while with email. In fact, email was a super standard feature. Not just email, but DecoMail with smileys, other icons, and animated flash templates - and of course proper Japanese support. Phones had IR that let you beam contacts (Including kanji names, email addresses, phone numbers, etc.) between them simply and easily. Phones had 1Seg TV, which didn't rely on internet, but was just regular digital TV adapted for small screens. Phones had "Osaifu Keitai" (Wallet phone), that let you pay for purchases and ride the train by touching your phone to the cash register or ticket gate. They had "TV Call" video calls, QR Code readers for entering URLs, "Veil View" to keep people next to you on the train from reading your mails, very good cameras (for phones), pedometers for measuring how much you walk, etc. I could go on, but the point is that Japanese "dumb phones" were pretty smart, much smarter than those in the rest of the world. These kinds of advanced-but-not-smartphone phones are typically called "Feature phones" in general in English, and "Galapagos Keitei" in Japan. (Referring to the fact that they were customized for this island).
Enter iPhone/Blackberry
So Japanese phones had a lot of features found *only* on Japanese phones - and the iPhone (and Blackberry) have none of those features. What they do have, though, is PC features. The iPhone's real breakthrough was that it was good at viewing not special mobile sites, but regular PC web sites. The Blackberry's was that it was good at PC email and could open and view PC attachments. Galapagos keitai weren't good at complex PC web pages or handling stuff like Spreadsheet attachments.
Blackberry entered first, only on Docomo's network, and only really for business users. The first generation iPhone wouldn't work in Japan since there was only 3G coverage, but when the iPhone 3G was offered, it sold like hotcakes to a hungry waiting crowd of people with money who like to follow trends. And let's face it, the iPhone was cool. You could open real web sites with it, and read real "computer" emails with attachments and stuff.
And then Android entered the market.
"Real Apps"
But more than just browsing web pages, what really made people like the iPhone and Android by the time the 3GS hit the market was all of the applications users could download and install. Technically, the Galapagos keitai (Japanese feature phones) did have applications, but accessing them was a bit of a pain. You would go to the special applications menu, and pick which one you wanted to run. You would wait about 30 seconds while Java fired up, and the application would load. The screen size was sometimes mismatched, or the resolution odd, and sometimes the processing was a bit slow and laggy but it worked well enough for some applications. Japan Rail's Mobile Suica recharge application (used to recharge the account balance for your train pass) is implemented this way, and worked more than well enough. But stuff like Google Earth? Unlikely.
The Dilemma
Then people who bought the iPhones started to notice that they worked more like office computers than Japanese Phones. "How come this thing doesn't have TV?", people asked, and so Softbank Mobile rushed a 1Seg TV accessory for the iPhone to market. "Why can't I read the DecoMail from my friends?", people asked, and a number of special Japanese email apps entered the market. People said "Man I wish this had Osaifu Keitai", and someone came up with an iPhone case that can hold train pass cards. "Hey this thing has a camera, why can't it do TV Call?", people asked. Eventually Apple came out with their own proprietary video call software, but it's not compatible with other phones - much as none of the iPhone technology is. One of the simplest and most irritating drawbacks was not having IR to send your contact information to another phone. You would meet someone at a party, and they would say "Let's exchange info!", and they would fire up the IR option, while you held your expensive "advanced" iPhone and had to sheepishly say "uhm.. my phone can't do that, can you just type in all that stuff including your purposely difficult email address?" Meanwhile, the iPhone's Japanese input software is somewhat primitive compared to state-of-the-art alternatives on other phones, and there is no way to add new input software to the iPhone, just as there is no way to modify most of how the operating system works.
Yes, people faced a dilemma. Give up all of their Japanese phone features to get more PC like features, or stick with what they know and want and forgo the smartphone fun. This is why some people upgraded, and some people didn't. (Of course many people simply kept one of each!)
Then something happened - Japanese makers got an idea. They could make their own Smartphones, and add Japanese feature phone features. One of the first was Sharp's "Galapagos" 003SH model. It has a great screen, but otherwise the basic specs sucked. The flash memory was too small, the memory was too small, and the processor was too slow. In fact, it was slow at everything except watching TV - but it could watch TV! And it could do IR contact transfer. And it could be used as a train pass. And it came with very good (and expensive) Japanese to English dictionaries that will cost you about $50 extra to buy for iOS. And it came with Japanese input software better than the iPhone's, plus a 3D screen to boot. The phone sucked in some ways, particularly the way that the home screen seemed to take 10 minutes to appear - but it was a proof of concept. The other Japanese makers got involved, and now everyone from Fujitsu to Sony makes phones with all the Japanese goodies. In fact, even Samsung started "Japanizing" their phones. The Japanese version of the Note II, for example, has Osaifu Keitai instead of NFC, and can handle 1Seg TV. (The Note is interesting, since the stylus allows for unique input opportunities with Japanese).
So now you don't need to choose, you can have a smartphone that also has Japanese features.
What about the iPhone 5? Uhm, well... no. nothing. It's a little taller than the iPhone 4, and a bit faster. That's about it. Still no Japanese features. Those people who didn't need the Japanese features will already probably have an iPhone 4 anyway. Even many of them are starting to think "Well now with the new Japanese smartphones, I can have my cake and eat it too...", and the iPhone is looking less attractive.
Outside Japan
Ok, so I explained the situation in Japan pretty well above - but what if you aren't in Japan? You don't care about 1Seg TV or Osaifu Keitai because those features wouldn't work where you are anyway. Or maybe you are in Japan, but like most foreigners in Japan, you have no idea what any of those features mentioned above are or how to use them. You could care less about Japanese input features, etc.
So let's just compare global models.
Obviously, the iPhone does have some advantages.
- There are very few models, so it will be easy to find cases and other accessories made specifically for the iPhone.
- Likewise, it runs iOS, which is easy to use, relatively stable. Most importantly, iOS has a lot of high quality applications.
- What's more, iTunes store has a lot of movies, music, and TV shows that you can very easily download and watch from your device. (Well, the movies and TV shows mostly only apply to the US app store).
Yet there are many disadvantages as well:
- Not much customization of home screen, icon, etc.
- No Widgets
- No choice of manufacturers
- No waterproof models
- No choice of screen size, etc.
- OS is not customizable (i..e you can't add stuff like Swype), and is weak in multitasking, which makes apps like Skype for iOS suck.
These are all from the consumer's standpoint, but from a manufacturer's standpoint, things are not any better. If you want to make something other than a phone. Whether you want to make a robot, a dashboard computer, a navigation system, a smart camera, etc., you might love to use iOS - but you can't. Apple won't license it to you. So you either somehow retrofit an iPod touch into your design, or you abandon your project. Or, you just use Android. Surprise, surprise, there are now cameras running Android from Nikkon and Samsung.
There is more variety of Android handsets, so even forgetting about the Japanese hardware, there are just a lot more choices for someone when they go with Android. There are small phones like the Sony Mini for people who want something that size, and there are monsters like the Galaxy Note as well. There are Android phones with keyboards, with stylus drawing, with two screens, flip-phone clamshell style phones, phones with superior cameras, etc. With the iPhone, there's just... the iPhone.
Upgrade?
Now let's look at the iPhone 5 from the various users' perspectives:
- First time iPhone user: iPhone 5 is a reasonable deal, but iPhone 4 is almost as good and considerably cheaper.
- iPhone 3G/3GS user: iPhone 4 or 5 would make a compelling upgrade. iPhone 4 probably has a more compelling price/performance ratio, though.
- iPhone 4 user: iPhone 5 is an expensive upgrade with little actual improvement. Probably not worth the money.
Part of the problem is that Apple has pushed about as much as it can out of its strategy. If they want to be in the luxury goods segment, then they can't market their phone to everyone - but if they want to grow their market, then they need to attract more customers. They are unwilling to lower prices much, and unwilling to customize their devices to local markets or different needs. The "Apple knows best" mentality is wearing thing, and people are wanting more options than just which color case to choose these days. The retina screen was cool, but other manufacturers have that too. Their camera is ok, but not the best. The same can be said about their storage capacity, battery, etc. The main thing Apple has for differentiation is the OS, and Android has more than caught up there on the phone side. The best thing for Apple to do would be to come out with some earth shattering features on the iOS side that would take everyone else ages to copy - but I don't see that happening.
So when people ask me what I think of the iPhone 5, my reaction is "meh, there are more important things in life".
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