In Asian countries, iPhone won’t be as popular due to the high number of “other” devices out on the market.

iPhone price cuts in Japan prove that iPhone is still priced too high for Asian consumers.

Let me explain why iPhone cannot be popular in Asia:

When I used to live in South Korea for years, we didn’t goto BestBuy or the local AT&T shop.  For the cheapest prices in South Korea, there’s this “town” called the Electronic Town.  You go here and there’s about 1000 different phones in each store.  (And there’s about 1000 different cellphone shops lined up everywhere)

Above is a screenshot of a typical “electronic” mall in Korea.  As you can see, this is just one of the many (usually around 7-10 floors) floors in just one of the many electronic malls.

Each of those circles represent a cellphone shop.  Some cell Samsung phone, LG phones, and some sell a mixed variety.  Each of these cellphone shops have different prices and the consumer must haggle for the best prices.

Now, can you see how iPhone can pop in one of these stores usually sponsored by big companies in Korea like LG and Samsung?  Even if iPhone does get sold in the stores, there’s usually 100s of other great phones at fraction of the price.

Aside from competing in these cell phone “malls”, iPhone itself isn’t really practical enough for people to cash out double, triple for another similar-grade Samsung phone.

On top of that, Asian countries have about 2-3 years advanced models of Samsung and LG phones.  The Samsung and LG phones you see in America are about 2-3 years old, they are the “leftovers” Samsung need to sell off.

So the mystery is, there’s so many new, innovative phones in Korea, why would you need iPhone?

Most phones in Korea come with air-frequency-enabled TV, iPhone is still selling outdated technology (YouTube) to us American consumers.

Don’t get me wrong, iPhone still have the best mobile browser, but it’s simply made for the “English” speaking countries, not localized for any Asian people.

If you don’t believe me, take a look at how popular Google search engine is in Korea, not very popular indeed, worse than Yahoo by many factors, and Yahoo ranks lower than Korean search engines.

Localization is not a part of the iPhone, therefore failure of sales in Japan and probably other Asian countries.

I think for iPhone to be popular, there’s gotta be reasons more than the great Safari browser, right now, that’s the only reason I’d buy one.

Tags: 3 years, american consumers, asian consumers, asian countries, bestbuy, cell phones, circles, electronic mall, electronic malls, electronic town, english speaking countries, iPhone, leftovers, lg phones, mobile browser, outdated technology, samsung, samsung phone, screenshot, south-korea

This entry was posted by max on Tuesday, September 16th, 2008 at 12:53 pm and is filed under A+Featured Gadgets, Consumer, Cool, Educational, Gadgets, cell phones, iPhone, iPhone 3G.