Macenstein

A new survey has come out which for some reason is being used by the media to forecast the iPhone’s failure in Japan. Apparently, in a survey of a 402 Japanese internet users, only 9% said they would definitely buy an iPhone when it is released. Headlines such as “Survey shows 91% of Japanese don’t care about iPhone 3G” are making the rounds across the blog-o-sphere, and even the legitimate press. However, to quote Lisa Simpson (by far my least favorite Simpson to quote) “people can come up with statistics to prove anything… 14% of people know that“.[Edit: Faithful Macenstein reader Darrell pointed out that it was in fact Homer who said that. I now feel better for quoting him over Lisa, but ashamed at the misattribution.]

Assuming that somehow those 402 people surveyed accurately represent Japan’s population of 127,433,494, that still means Apple will sell 11,469,014 iPhones in Japan, which is more than it has sold already in the US. Sounds pretty good, right? So, why isn’t the headline “Apple to sell 11.5 million iPhones in Japan“?

Well, the only thing I can figure is everyone in Japan is so worried about upsetting Godzuki (above), the lovable nephew of Godzilla, (and long-time Nokia N78 user), that they are skewing the statistics to paint a less than rosy picture of the iPhone’s success to spare his feelings.

Either that or Mechagodzilla (right) is worried he will no longer be the most high-tech piece of gadgetry, and is somehow manipulating the press. This seems a little less likely, however, although we have heard rumors that Apple is experimenting with Space Titanium, – the alloy Mechagodzilla is composed of – for an upcoming portable, so we are not quite ready to rule that out yet.