Thriving “iPhone magazine” industry springs up in Japan
We’ve heard mixed reports as to whether the Japanese love or hate the iPhone, but if these shots are any indication, it would appear the Japanese are more than a little curious about Apple’s phone, to say the least.
Apparently on Tokyo news stands there are no fewer than 4 iPhone-specific magazines dedicated to the device – no small feat when you realize the iPhone only hit the streets a month ago. It’s even more impressive when you realize that in the US I think there are now only 2 or 3 major Mac publications still in physical print, and those cover a wider spectrum of Apple news (and have a much larger potential audience). Yes, it would appear the iPhone is flying higher than Mothra in Japan. Of course, apparently a good portion of the magazines are dedicated to tutorials on how to jailbreak your 3G iPhone, but still, this can’t be bad news for Japanese iPhone sales.
[via amarinalameda]
Mothra is changing his name to Mothra 3G and looking for a new publicist.
A lot of people in these Digg comments were saying they live in Japan and it’s not popular at all and they don’t know anyone who owns one:
http://bit.ly/3xXZfY
That’s rubbish. I live on the tiniest (and poorest, interestingly) island in the most remote part of Japan and HEAPS of people have them here. While I was in Tokyo and Osaka last week I saw a lot of people using them too.
Also of interest is that these iPhone magazines have actually been around in Japan since just after the first iPhone release last year. I assure you there are a lot more than 4. My local Family Mart has at least 6 different magazines and I’m in the middle of nowhere!
Its amazing what wealthy (“I’ve owned every iPhone, Blackberry, Symbian, and Windows Mobile Phone, and can tell you with authority the Nokia N95 is the best” ), well traveled (“I’ve visited 20 countries in the last 2 months, and didn’t see ONE iPhone. NOT ONE”) and technically proficient (“I have personally dissected and analyzed the assembly language programming on the 3G chips, and can tell you…”) users Digg has-its a wonder they have time to Digg! :p
One thing about Japan though-they have magazines for EVERYTHING. And not just one or two either-every obscure hobby or product or fetish seems to have several publications.
Please guys !!
Don’t buy iPhones !!!
It was fun when I was one of the only one with an iPhone… it felt like I was a hollywood star… Now, everybody is getting one and .. its annoying! It is not exclusive anymore !!!
So please, buy the N1995 … the Crackberry … a Coconut Palm … a Foursome .. I mean Treo … but forget the iPhones.
🙂
I wasn’t going to comment, but then ReCAPTCHA’s two words where “evidence groping” so I had to bring that up.
for sale at sedo.com
http://www.iphonemag.com
http://www.iphone3gmagazine.com
http://www.iphone3gmag.com
http://www.3giphonemagazine.com
I call bullshit on ‘stupod’.
I doubt he lives on Yonaguni (the remotest small island) and let’s see how many people actually have them there, let alone whether SoftBank’s signal works there.
The fact is that the first run 3G iPhones have not sold out in Japan – I can still get one at my local SoftBank store in the Tokyo area. It may be a success by any standards, but reports of it selling out are wrong.