3GWeek - Asia’s Mobile News

Well, during these last 2 months, there are 200,000 units of iPhone 3G sold in Japan only, according to MM Research Institute. Yet, since Softbank Mobile, the exclusive operator, has about 19.5 million subscribers, it only count 1% for total subscribers! One good reason is that iPhone 3G has a high starting price. US$ 321 as the starting price for 16GB version seems a little bit high for high price living in Japan.

Still, a survey conducted by goo Research reveals that iPhone 3G is not that sexy for Japanese because there are lot of other phones that “more attractive” than the Apple toy! Here was what goo Research do in compiling the survey:

Between the 18th and 21st of August 2008 1,000 mobile phone-using members of the goo Research online monitor pool completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 51.2% of the sample were female, 2.0% were in their teens, 18.3% in their twenties, 40.8% in their thirties, 24.6% in their forties, and 14.3% aged fifty or older.

So, what’s the result? Apple product only listed 0.3% of usage among those 1000 members (means about 30 units). Most people are using Sharp and Panasonic. Still, there are 8.3% members that are interested in trying the capability of this iPhone 3G, compared to 21.3% for Sharp and 9.8% in Panasonic. It means that in near future, the iPhone usage will get higher in Japan, even not as high as Sharp, Panasonic, or NEC.

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