November 19, 2004

iPods in Japan

ipod.jpgAccording to this article, Apple has sold 500,000 iPods in Japan, out of a total 60 million worldwide. Does it not strike anyone as odd that the Japanese consumer is making up less than 1% of the world market? And Apple has 50% of the mp3 player market, so it's not like some other company is selling more. Didn't the Japanese used to be all high-tech and interested in consumer electronics?
Posted by marxy at November 19, 2004 12:29 PM
Comments

I'm pretty sure 300k of those 500k in Japan ride the Hibiya line every day. I don't feel special for having mine now like I did when I got here.

Posted by: Graham at November 19, 2004 8:32 PM

Yeah, Japanese consumers have recently snapped them up, but I remember three years ago when they came out in America. This seems to be a substantial lag in consumer adoption, compared with Japan in the 90s, which usually adopted before America.

Posted by: marxy at November 19, 2004 8:52 PM

I'm with Graham on this one. The article did not reference the source of the numbers or how they were derived. Apple themselves does not publish sales by region, so where did the 500,000 number come from?

Posted by: Chris_B at November 22, 2004 11:02 AM

Sony has figured out that they have lost the race to the iPod: http://www.iht.com/articles/2004/11/24/bloomberg/sxipod.html

Posted by: Chris_B at November 25, 2004 12:01 PM

Thanks for the link to that article, which by the way, also suggests that the number of iPods sold in Japan is around 500K (40% of 1.25 million or something like that).

Posted by: marxy at November 25, 2004 8:06 PM

My impression is that Sony and others have been pushing MD's for all it's worth. This summer I think I saw an ad for an mp3-player saying something like "no more minidisc bla bla...". Sony hasn't made it easy with their "atrac"-format (or whatever it's called), but they seem to have understood that they need to support mp3, and I think that they have several players supporting mp3 on the way (if not here allready).

Posted by: Erik at November 29, 2004 11:17 PM

i-pod's are Burberry check for the technological elite

Posted by: matt at April 13, 2005 1:54 PM

please reply! i want to buy a 4gb ipod from japan hwo much woudld it cost shippign etc! please reply!

Posted by: Amandeep Dhaliwal at May 27, 2005 3:44 AM

I would like to buy an ipod from japan and was wondering how much they were and hoe much it would cost to ship it over here?

Posted by: Katie Talbot at June 30, 2005 8:38 PM