No Brainer

What is with Japanese Prime Ministers? They don’t seem to stay around very long.

Prime Minister Koizumi seemed to last the longest of any of the recent ones. Yukio Hatoyama, the current Prime Minister, has said he will now resign because Okinawans are upset that he went back on his word not to relocate the American military base on Okinawa.

I can understand why they are upset, but for him to resign because of it is a little difficult to swallow.

It seems that anytime a Japanese prime minister displeases his countrymen he resigns.

It kinda goes against “when the going gets tough…” phrase, eh?

In Japan it’s more like, “When the going gets tough, slide outta the way and let someone else come make their mistake so the next person can come in and do theirs and so on…”

Next?

Apple iPhone is picking up steam in the cellular phone wars in Japan. Japanese used to fear buying an iPhone because it has been labeled an American phone. So most Japanese think they cannot operate an iPhone because they think it doesn’t read or write or operate in Japanese.

So what’s changed? Not much except as more and more non-foreigner people run around with the very handy phone, Japanese are taking notice and becoming interested. However, they are not the only to notice the recent increase in iPhone purchases.

Docomo, eMobile and KDDI au are beginning to air commercials to combat the growing popularity of the iPhone. What is their focus? It seems to be games. Commercials on TV and in print show people having fun playing games on their cellular phones. As an iPhone user though, it makes me laugh. I have played some of the games on the old-style cell phones and they are nothing compared to the much higher quality intense games on the iPhone. On top of that, the screen size and interaction methods old-style cellular phones have compared to the iPhone are nowhere in the same league.

Docomo, KDDI au and eMobile must be hoping to catch the elderly cell phone users, those who know very little about the iPhone or those who are still afraid to make the jump from old-style cell phone to iPhone. If people in Japan continue to catch wind of iPhone and how much easier it is than they think, companies competing with the iPhone are sure to begin losing customers. Not even the latest touch screen phones being marketed by these companies can stand up to its competition.