As with most accomplishments these days, we can't help but place a rather large asterisk next to Sony's award for managing to outsell the iPod lineup with its
Walkman. According to Tokyo-based research firm BCN Inc., for the week ending August 30th, the Walkman series had a 43 percent share of the personal music player market versus 42.1 percent for iPods, marking the first time in four years that Sony's managed to get the upper hand. Got that? Good, now for a major caveat. For whatever reason, iPhones aren't considered part of the iPod line, meaning people who want the luxuries of the iPod touch
and a wireless data plan aren't included in the survey. That's quite an omission -- the
iPhone 3GS is currently the best-selling phone in Japan, after all -- and we gotta imagine it'd be more than enough to tilt the data in Apple's favor, even if you threw in Sony Ericsson's Walkman phones for good measure. But hey, it's still a feat in its own right, and Sony might as well celebrate while it lasts -- something tells us the gang in Cupertino has
something up their sleeve soon.
posted Sep 3rd 2009 2:02PM
Bait is out, now bite!
bite this!!!
*moons*
If you include the iPhone, why not include every other phone that can play music?
OK Engadget, you're on. Find a study that compares Iphones to Sony Ericsson Walkman phones. Let's see who wins.
It's flame bait!
YEEHA!
Anyway...
As has been mentioned, the iPhone is a phone so if we're going to count that then let's count every other music capable phone or at least Sony music capable phones. Oh and the iPhone was the top selling phone in Japan for a while in July. This is now September.
You may continue the angst from here.
http://www.thebestpageintheuniverse.net/c.cgi?u=iphone
Japanese people are smart. Amen.
Yeah... if you include the iPhone, why not every Sony phone?
@ichheissesuperfantastisch and Greg
The article also states that the iPhone was the biggest selling phone, so including walkman phones in that wouldn't change the results unless walkman had sold more than the iPhone.
On a sidenote, I agree it was ridiculous of Engadget to even mention the "caveat". Sony sold more MP3 players, that's all there is to it. Phones shouldn't count.
The report is for the ending week in August and the margin is less than 1%. But people are
waiting for the new iPod to be announced next week so this report is rather meaningless.
I will try to explain how comparisons work since some people don't seem to understand them.
This is the fact: [In July, the Iphone sold more units than any other
cellphone in Japan.]
This is very different to: [The Iphone is selling now more units than
any other cellphone] (Latest ranking has it at 8th position:
http://plusd.itmedia.co.jp/mobile/articles/0908/28/news082.html So
currently it is NOT the best selling phone.)
It is also very different to: [The Iphone sold more than all the Sony
cellphones combined.] (Sony currently sells over 10 different
cellphones in Japan).
There is no data that I could find to either prove or deny this third
sentence.
...................
As anything that has to do with apple, don't believe everything you
read here ；）
@tanporakuda
Don't you realize no one here actually bothers to read facts?
Anyway, the major reason why the iPhone is /not/ included in this comparison is *ahem* probably because you need to sign a 1-2yr cellular contract. And last I checked, I'm pretty sure most PMPs don't require such contracts. Not sure how Engadget missed that little detail.
Remember, SE's flagship Walkman phone in Japan has line-in, a WVGA screen, and masses of other audio-oriented features. They also have a couple more models than that one. Yeah, I see the iPhone being pwned on that basis. Not to mention their older W64S model has found a market for itself overseas despite everything beside voice calls not working outside Japan.
Wheres your answer Ross?
Walkman...... Talk about "Ghosts from Christmas past". Is it a real resurrection this time?
I don't actually know if considering the iPhone in the study would "tilt the scales in Apple's favor".
The iPhone isn't very popular in Japan.
Pretty sure that's not true. I read an article recently that said that the 3GS has actually sold extremely well in Japan.
i too have heard they haven't been selling too well in comparison to other phones. One month of Top sales doesn't really mean anything, thats like saying PS3 sales topped xbox360 for one month so it must be doing the best(which it has), but the xbox360 has still majorly outsold the ps3.
There's a error in that post. That is one weeks placements, not one months. iPhone was #2 in july.
But lately it havent been done well. 2 weeks ago it didnt even fit into the top 10, and this week, oddly enough there is a iphone in top 10, old 3G 8GB model on 8th place. The iPhone 3GS has gone down to 18th place, and still dropping.
Is apple dumping refurbished 3G models to japan?
FoxKenji - only if you count the one week in July when the iPhone was released in Japan...if you count the entire month of July it was in 2nd place. Now, it's in 7th place if you check today
http://bcnranking.jp/category/subcategory_0010_month.html
Thefigures seem to show that there was a quick uptake (most likely by existing iPhone owners) and that it has now fallen back down. The iPhone isn't a popular phone in Japan, it has even less features then what the Japanese would consider Featurephones, or even dumbphones. It doesn't even have a chance of stacking up to the feature list of smartphones in Japan, and in Japan all that seems to sell a handset is the feature list, not ease of use.
@FoxKenji
I'm pretty sure. I think.
According to these stats:
http://images.google.ca/imgres?imgurl=http://www.analytica1st.com/analytica1st/img/jp_mobile_phone_users_2008.GIF&imgrefurl=http://analytica1st.com/analytica1st/2009/01/japan-finishes-2008-with-105-million.html&usg=__ISZKNZyi9mF1MFXggCzZWro2lM8=&h=385&w=302&sz=10&hl=en&start=1&um=1&tbnid=a-zBZ0rveB2ZeM:&tbnh=123&tbnw=96&prev=/images%3Fq%3DCarrier%2Bmarket%2Bshare%2Bin%2BJapan%26hl%3Den%26client%3Dopera%26rls%3Den%26sa%3DN%26um%3D1
DoCoMo has around 50% of the market share, while Softbank has only 18%. And chances are out of that 18% of the market share, many of the people will consider the iPhone heavily lacking in features. Features like OneSeg TV and FeliCa Osaifu-Keitai are missing from the iPhone. Most people in Japan also own and prefer clamshell style phones. I'm also not surprised it's on Softbank. Apple probably wanted DoCoMo to carry it, but DoCoMo refused because of lack of features (this is just my guess, of course). Then Apple probably promised Softbank the iPhone would get them subscribers and softbank took it. (AGAIN, JUST MY GUESS.)
Again, the overwhelming majority of people in Japan like flip phones, and knowing Japanese society I figure nobody is going to want to "stand out" by having a phone that isn't the same form factor as everyone else on the crowded subway.
I know it sounds stupid, but it just seems like something that would happen.
HAHAHAHA!!!
FoxKenji is using an Engadget's post as his source?
Talk about reliable and unbiased.
I already have a walkman... it has 4-second skip protection. WHEE!
I think it's amazing that the fact that a Japanese company's product beating an American one in Japan is considered an anomaly rather than the norm.
Please excuse the grammar on that last post, I was considering several ways to word that thought and it looks like they got mutated together like in The Fly.
You mean the other way around? An American product beating a Japanese product in Japan. Maybe as far as consumer electronics goes but in other markets American products still dominate, like soft drinks (Coca Cola), apparel (Levi's jeans), entertainment (Hollywood movies) and blah blah blah. Heck, Japan is one of the leading buyers of American military equipment.
I think the latest, greatest import from Japan lately has been Hello Kitty. Seriously, Hello Kitty has been around since 1974 but only in the last few years has it made a huge splash in the West. So what's up with that cat? it's sole reason d'etre is licensing and merchandising. Sanrio owns the rights but any manufacturer willing to pony up the fees and follow the rules can make and profit from Hello Kitty products. I've seen HK laptops, bicycles, vacuum cleaners, frying pans and even a vibrator!
@FoxKenji
It seems to me that even though sales wise hello kitty is doing really good right now, in the late 90's Hello Kitty was far more noticeable in public and on media. I dont see as many kids with hello kitty crap walking around and you do not really see hello kitty promoted by stars like it used to be of course mariah carey still flashes it every once in a while.
What the hell does it matter?
They both are made in China.
haha i like the * above the walkman
But Engadget! You do know that Sony Ericsson makes Walkman phones? Why shouldn't they count? This smells like a fanboy article..
" even if you threw in Sony Ericsson's Walkman phones for good measure."
Read the article.
Agreed, not to mention pretty much any normal Sony Ericsson phone comes standard with the walkman application now so every sony ericsson phone with that app should be counted with the iPhone as well.
I was replying to Jakob, so the article missed the point by just mentioning only walkman phones.
well, you can't blame him for not reading the article - he smelt it.
Wonder how the Zune HD will do in japan.
0 sales. It's not being released in Japan. At least... not yet.
Yeah, zero sales for the Zune HD in Japan. It's a U.S. only device. Speculation that it will be available internationally are just rumors.
I have to say I'm not that excited about Apple's media event this year, unless Steve pulls out that iTablet thing out of his backpocket. But I can savely say this is how it'll go down:
Steve Jobs: "well our customers love the videocamera's in their iphones so much, we thought we'd bring to the entire ipod line as well bla bla bla"
Where have you been?
Apple has been pulling this shit for years.
Why the hell WOULD they include a PHONE in a comparison of market share between a sony PMP and an apple PMP.....
I'm sure if they tossed in Apple Macbooks it might tilt the scales also....hell macbooks play music? Right?
Give it up Engadget
win
I agree with this post. If they added the iPhone, then couldn't they just add any Sony Ericson phone that also played media?
Do Blackberries and iPods compare to each other? can we compare the Palm Pre market share to the Zune?
Why include phones? It's because people are increasingly choosing convergence devices that do everything AND make phone calls. This is where the market is heading.
I thought that was an odd implication as well. I think the problem is, though, that the lines between the two are getting too blurry. How many people actually buy both an iPod AND an iPhone? Just about everyone who buys an iPhone buys it so they can have an iPod that makes calls. So it can't be denied that the iPhone cannibalizes a good deal of iPod sales and hugely throws off such statistics. I'm not sure there's any fair way to compare PMPs any more since there's just too many cell phone offshoots that would screw up the numbers.
I agree with your premise, but I'll go ahead and call you an idiot anyway for trying to blame bias here.
Clearly including iPhones would be inaccurate because many people buy them and don't touch the iPod feature. Yet the iPod feature is a huge selling point; without that feature, there would be more iPods sold and fewer iPhones. If you can't recognize this, well.......
Probably Engadget made the same bet as John Madden, but instead of mentioning Brett Favre... Well, you get my point.
While I am not an Apple fan I can see some of the logic behind the comparison. Many of the would be iPod buyers are opting for the iPhone instead, so that does bring a phone into the equation. Normally I would agree but in this case its perfectly logical. The iPhone is cannibalizing iPod sales......
....and before you speak too quick....I own a Pre..
Yep, convergent devices are becoming the norm. And since basically every Sony-Ericsson phone sold today also plays music (not just the ones they've branded "walkman"), then they all should be included, right? And in this comparison, Apple would most certainly still lose in Japan.
The problem with starting to include convergent devices is that you need to draw the lines somewhere. There are very few single-purpose devices anymore. Drawing it at "allows for cellular communications" would seem to make much more sense than generically "is portable and can play music."
Russ, very poor post.