"Why the iPhone will not have a big hit in Japan"

Few reasons why iPhone 3G will not be a hit in Japan:

• Lack of "1seg"
  The digital TV transition is not an issue only in the U.S. but also in Japan. However, in Japan, the transition is near completion and a service called "one-segment" allows digital broadcasts viewable on mobile devices. Did you think AQUOS was all about huge flat-panel TVs? See the AQUOS mobile phone. BTW, SoftBank is the main carrier for this phone which also is for the iPhone.
  
  
• Lack of physical keypad
  Japanese is among the many other language groups forced to use the typical QWERTY keyboard on computers. There are thousands of unique characters compared to the relatively simple 26-alphabet English; although many are stuck with it, QWERTY never makes sense as an input method. Now, many, especially young ones, in Japan are finding that the 10-key pads on the phones are actually easy to use combined with technologies such as T9. It's unbelievable but true.
  
  
• Lack of "Emoji" (A set of emoticons on Japanese mobile phones)
  This is just an assumption, but I don't think the iPhone will include these characters. Although these are just emoticons, for the young Japanese, it is part of their language culture and they use intensely. I mean really intensely. A sample from SoftBank.
  Left-double-quote + Paper Emoji (part of the rock-scissors-paper collection) =  is supposed to look like a waving hand meaning good-bye.
  
  
• Lack of "Osaifu-Keitai"
  Until a few years ago, Japan seemed to be behind in payment system infrastructure. The use of credit cards were just not part of Japanese people's life. But they did make a big leap and went way ahead. With a mobile phone, you can buy a soda from a vending machine as well as use it as a boarding pass for your flight to Tokyo. You think that's crazy? Well, they are!
  
  
• Total lack of "cuteness"
  Japanese females are all about cute stuff. The iPhone just won't appeal to them. It's not cute...

The mobile phone market in Japan is very unique. You won't see Motorola, Nokia, Samsung, models seen in the U.S., but see NEC, Sanyo, Panasonic, Sony, everything only released in Japan. The expectations are different, so obviously the available features are too along with the culture entirely. Apple is targeting consumers first which is smart, but that has been the case in Japan and the iPhone is just not appealing. "It just won't work."

Disclaimer:
I am saying that the iPhone 3G July 11th edition won't be a hit in Japan. It may still have a small sales. Furthermore, this is just my opinion. So don't complain if you don't like it.

Hold Off on Blu-ray Just Yet

Nowadays, 1TB hard-drives are common consumer products. Thanks for the PMR technology researched by Tohoku University of Japan in 1976 and Toshiba applying this to HDD in 2004.

The same university now came up with a technology to increase the capacity of the current CD-ROM and DVD by 9 times. (The paper is not available in English on their website yet. See the announcement on Optics Express.) That means a single layer 4.7GB DVD can now potentially hold 42GB of data; way more than Blu-ray's 25GB capacity.

Okay, what do we name this? DVD, DVD-?, DVD+?... oh HD-DVD, no it died... Got it, DVD-KungFusion! No body beats me this time!

Toshiba and Sony, I suggest both parties to join the DVD-KF alliance. Thank you.

Japan to Realize "Minority Report"

Do you remember the Spielberg movie "Minority Report"? The tag line was:

What would you do if you were accused of a murder, you had not committed... yet?

Obviously a science-fiction movie in the U.S. is not the case in Japan. The Japanese government recently (June 11th) announced that it will put a budget for 2009 to research and implement a "crime notification system". No, it's not a system that alerts you when a crime is committed. It's a system that detects and alerts before the crime! A prevention system like the movie!

Did the Japanese find these people with the ability to foresee the future? No. The technology is to scan the Internet for any signs of heavy crime like murderer including suicide.

Hey, if you are visiting Japan, be careful what you mention in your emails or posts on the web...

CNET Japan: 総務省がネットの犯行予告を自動検知するシステム開発に着手

Ultimate Smooth Surface, Form Changing Car

I like this concept. Yes, we all need to break out of the shell and have more freedom in thinking.

Leopard Update: 10.5.3 Released

Apple has finally released Mac OS X Leopard 10.5.3. Interestingly, this update adds a feature which you can sync your Address Book with Google Contacts; contact information in your Gmail account.

The catch is, however, that you need an iPhone to use this feature. I really wonder why this is the case. Technical reasons? I don't think so. Apple probably wants to sell you an iPhone if you don't have one yet, because you want to sync your Address Book with Google Contacts so bad...

And, don't get too excited. This does not sync iCal and Google Calendar. That's a third party's job.

Pandora Radio - Free & Clean Online Radio

Many may already know, but I recently discovered a cool Internet radio station. It's "my station"!

Ok, so what this is is...
Pandora Radio has a huge database of music from all genre which each music is carefully analyzied by "The Music Genome Project". This database is then used to find music of your preference. "Doesn't sound anything new", you say?

True, other music services usually has "recommendation" features, but this analysis is beyond genre, artist names or the looks of the band. Also, it's very quick to get started. Just search one song by an artist name and it will start to play music from various artists like a radio station. Then you can give "thumbs up" to selections that you liked. Another great thing is, you can create as many "stations" as you like. So the music selection is NOT from all of your favorite songs mixed together, but you can create different flavors of your preference. You might like country and alternatives, but that doesn't mean you want to listen to both mixed together all the time, right?

Pandora has a very simple and clean interface. I find the selections by Pandora very appealing and helps me find artists that I did not know, yet sounds that matches my taste. Give it a try, or listen to my stations!

Note: Pandora uses Adobe Flash and your account information is stored there. Information stored in Flash seems to be shared across all users and browsers on the computer so be sure to sign out if you want to keep your information private.

"iPhone is going to dominate the mobile phone market."

I have to say, iPhone is going to dominate the mobile phone market.

Apple, today, announced the iPhone SDK which allows developers to create native applications. They also announced that in the next iPhone software release, it would be enterprise compatible by supporting Microsoft Exchange and Cisco IPsec VPN. This will be all built-in to the iPhone software, available by default.

Now, all this with the proven design of the iPhone hardware/software/user interface, what device could possibly beat the iPhone?

Personally, for the general public, enterprise, I think the Exchange support was an unexpected surprise. This probably is going to easily push iPhone share at a sky rocketing degree. I see many asking IT for an iPhone and you can really feel the demand. I also hear IT usually saying no to this, but they have no reason to do that anymore.