Reporter's notebook: Why iPad isn't cracking the Japanese market

TOKYO — While the rest of the world goes gaga over Apple's iPad, I find an island of calm here -- some 5,000 miles away from the epicenter of Apple's announcement Wednesday (Jan. 27).
I'd be lying if I said I felt no frustration. Nobody wants to miss a big story. That's the essence of being a reporter.
Still, I wasn't exactly tearing out my hair over here.
The reason is that this nation of avid readers doesn't seem to give a hoot about e-books -- Apple's version or anybody else's.
I was on a commuter train to Tokyo the other day and, unlike the U.S., saw not a soul reading an e-book. I did see a many fellow straphangers staring down on their mobile phone displays.
This afternoon, I was over at Yamada-Denki, one of the largest consumer electronics retail stores in Japan. Not a single e-book device is on display. It couldn't be! They carry almost anything electronic. But not e-books.
What's going on here?
The last time I checked, many Japanese companies were developing their own, innovative e-paper displays.
For one, Bridgestone (yes, I know -- they make tires) last year showed off at a trade show here an e-paper display that, some say, beats anything currently in use. Unlike other e-readers on the market today, Bridgestone does it without depending on E-Ink's pervasive e-reader technology. By developing its own electronic powder, Bridgestone came up with a home-grown, low-power, electrophoretic technology.
The company also claims that it's developing a color e-paper display that uses a series of filters covering each individual pixel. The hitch in this technology is its slow refresh rate.
Sony, a player in the U.S. e-book market, isn't armed with an e-book display technology of its own, but it has learned a thing or two about e-books: it led the revolution of electronic dictionaries in Japan several decades ago.
Not only is Japan a nation of gadget-lovers, it's a country where people still read -- a lot -- whether it's books, cartoons, magazines or newspapers.
So, how to explain the unanimous ennui among the Japanese over iPad and, more significantly, e-books in general?
The answer is simple. It's the "ecosystem," stupid!
First of all, there are few Japanese e-book models. Nothing available here really rivals Kindle, although Japan is the land of hardware.
Amazon sells Kindle in Japan, but very few Japanese users are actually reading on Kindle books published in Japanese — because Kindle's software inexplicably does not support the Japanese language. (Apparently, the default fonts in Kindle don't contain non-Latin alphabets.)
The exception is a buddy of mine, Yoichiro Hata, editor-in-chief of EE Times Japan, our sister publication here.
Hata is blessed with the sort of geek skills that allow him to tweak the Kindle software to read e-books in his native tongue. Hata loves Kindle. But he complains that few new Japanese books are available in the e-book format.
It turns out that the real problem is neither the display technology nor the software (or the lack thereof supporting the Japanese language).
Despite interest among Japanese hardware manufacturers in e-paper technologies, no e-book companies (Sony included) have enough clout to persuade hidebound Japanese book publishers to release their latest books on e-readers.
A few Japanese publishers ventured into the e-book market in the past by teaming with e-book manufacturers. "None succeeded," said a sales clerk at Yamada-denki, "because of the lack of content."
But there is hope, he said. "Because of Apple's iPad announcement today, we are hoping that Japanese consumers may finally wake up to the e-book fad."
Will they? After all, the land of mobile phones is virgin territory for e-books.
Hata quipped: "If Apple really wants to be a player in Japan with iPad, the company's strategy is straightforward. It should go aggressive in signing up leading Japanese book publishers for iPad."
As with Steve Jobs' deals with major music labels that have led to the success of Apple's iPod, Apple may have "an opportunity to create a landslide for iPad," said Hata, in Japan's yet-to-emerge e-book market.
Jobs will have to pick up his iPhone and start making cold calls.
Junko Yoshida EE Times


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