The Apple iPhone in Japan
The Apple iPhone presented a bit of a dilemma to the Japanese tech crowd. It closed the once monumental gap between the western world and Japanese mobile phone technology. In fact the iPhone pretty much surpassed it. But for some bizarre reason the Japanese never jumped on the iPhone trend like we did. Perhaps simply to smite Apple for toppling their handset dominance? Who knows? It may very well have been because the original iPhone didn't offer to the Japanese market what they look for in a handset; useless functionality, terrible ergonomics and a big enough area to stick glitter and general Japanese twinkliness to.
I have two phones in Japan, an iPhone and a Sony Ericsson. My Sony is standard Japanese phone fare; TV, insane number of megapixel camera, built like a transformer and comes with a nice area to dangle phone jewellery from. All this however is totally useless, but the Japanese like useless. They like technological arrogance, the idea that they have already invented it all so they may as well go an design something stupid just to laugh in our western faces. Look at Honda's hydrogen fuel cell, after proving they could do away with fossil fuels altogether Honda went about designing the world's most elaborate wheelchair.