> One, as you mentioned, is the price.

No, I did not say that. That price thing is in the original WSJ quote. I do not think the price is not so different from other cellularphone if you have single phone (many of iPhone users keep their first phone in Japan).

About Japanese input, actually, iPhone has number input method similar to regular cell phones. It is not only QWERTY. And it is enhanced to use “touch and slide” so you do not need to press the same key 5 times.

Apple recruited a notable Japanese user interface engineer Toshiyuki Masui from Sony years ago and let him move to California for that (possibly for this).

By some reason, maturity of the function was not good at the initial iPhone release, but as far as I heard, it has been much improved at firmware update 2.1. You should try it.

I do not believe everyone can do like this, but one iPhone fan shows how you can type Japanese rapidly with the 2.1 software.

http://jp.youtube.com/watch?v=-ul9f_euMlQ

There is an additional, very simple reason why it did not catch on: It’s a hassle to write Japanese on it. I tried. I gave up. Japanese are used to write very quickly on a number keyboard. For some weird reason, the iPhone expects you to type Japanese on a QWERTY keyboard. Not only is that not faster at all, it’s a pain because you have super-small buttons, some of which you don’t need (qwlxcv). A simple keyboard with all the Hiragana of the a-column would be faster and less error-prone to type, and it would be what Japanese cell phone users expect.

Oh, did I mention that my run-of-the-mill two year old Sharp not only has 3G, but also advanced features like copy and paste?

That said, Apple can still make the iPhone a success in Japan. Obviously the price has to drop. Then, Apple needs to hire some Japanese coders, interface designers and Japanese cell phone market experts to provide the functions that Japanese users expect. They should start with simple window dressing like the emoticons for mail.

Support for the many apps, especially games already out there should be next.

Apart from that, Apple should do fine. They do have one advantage: They currently have the only phone on the market that can handle many “normal” web sites outside of the special mobile phone pages that other cell phones are locked in. And the iPhone wins in pure sexiness, which is a big factor with Japanese women (which are Apple’s main target audience for the iPhone, at least if their market research does their homework)

Nuff said.