Sharp is releasing an Aquos Android clamshell phone with a 16-megapixel camera running Gingerbread. This is the latest step in Android’s quiet and gradual takeover of the Japanese phone market. I believe that Japan will eventually become a strategic stronghold for Android and in turn this will serve to shore up Google’s historically weak performance against Yahoo in search and online services in Japan.

Japanese Market

The mobile phone market in Japan has always suffered from the Galapagos syndrome. Clamshell phones developed in Japan by companies such as Casio and Sharp can find little demand in other markets, while on the flip-side, international titans like Nokia and Blackberry never had any significant presence in Japan.

Some believe that Japanese consumers simply dislike foreign products because they are not Japanese while pointing to examples such as the Xbox 360, but Apple’s success with iPod demonstrates that that is a superficial argument. The more likely explanation is that Japanese consumers have quirky demands that are often not part of the design considerations for overseas companies.

Most phones in Japan still look like these

The iPhone has found greater success in Japan than any other foreign-made phones, but its presence is nowhere close to the level of ubiquity it commands elsewhere. That is because as much as iPhone and Apple are considered hip brand names in Japan, Apple’s brand philosophy does not allow the iPhone to be customized for the Japanese market beyond adding emoticons to the soft keypad. The poor-performance camera, the lack of Mobile FeliCa contactless payment and the lack of 1seg digital receiver are severe disadvantages in the Japanese market and these cannot be resolved without custom hardware.

At the same time, Japanese keitai phones are rapidly falling behind in terms of software, a traditional area of weakness for the Japanese tech industry. New keitai models being released today are still running heavily modified variants of Symbian, an outdated platform that has been dead for years and recently abandoned by its primary proponent Nokia in favour of Windows Phone 7. The Japanese industry needs a new platform fast but is incapable of creating one.

Android’s Rise

This is where Android comes in. Unlike iOS, Android is flexible enough to be adapted for all the range of hardware required by the Japanese market.

Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7 doesn’t even have support for Japanese input yet. Microsoft has traditionally been inept at marketing for Japan and its mobile division clearly does not see Japan as an important market. Furthermore, WP7 also comes with stricter hardware guidelines (e.g. capacitive touchscreen) that are unlikely to fly well with the clamshell phones that Japanese school girls love so much.

Android au KDDI selections

The process has already begun. Android has already replaced Windows Mobile 6.5 in the smartphone market in Japan. Just take a look at the smartphone offerings for the three major providers: Docomo, au KDDI and Softbank. They are dominated by Android, save for maybe one WM6.5 and one Blackberry. The only real competition in this sector is the iPhone, which is doing quite well as Apple products enjoy the cool factor even in Japan.

For the past few months, KDDI has been running a series of Android ads called “Android au” in multiple media formats, a campaign that is reminiscent of Verizon’s successful Droid campaign which is often cited as the reason for the sudden explosion in popularity of the Android platform. The KDDI Android ads include endorsement by boy band Arashi and prime-time TV spots, suggesting that KDDI is rather serious about committing to the platform for the long term.

Android’s Dominance

Last year, it was reported that iPhone took up 72% of the smartphone market in Japan in FY 2009. This sounds very impressive at first, until one realizes this is because a smartphone market didn’t exist and even high-end keitai phones are not considered smartphones. In actuality, Apple’s overall 2009 mobile marketshare in Japan amounted to a mere 4.9%. (Source: MM Research Institute)

In the fiscal year 2010, which had just ended, Android sales exploded and took up 57% of the Japanese smartphone market with 4.91 million units sold, while Apple fell to 38% with 3.23 million units. (Source: Bloomberg) With the support of KDDI and OEM giants like Sharp, Android’s lead in the smartphone market appears to have been secured. But beating Apple is just the first step.

The real battle lies in the keitai market, the vast majority of the Japanese mobile industry, and this is where Android will cement its dominance. The iOS is not even in play here due to its hardware dependency and there is no other competing OS platform with the same long-term potential and developer support that Android has. Furthermore, Japanese users expect their keitai interface to conform to certain norms and Android is really the only modern smartphone OS malleable enough to fit that mould and displace Symbian. Sharp’s new clamshell phone marks the beginning of this process.

Implications

For Japanese keitai manufacturers such as Sharp, Android is the most obvious way to leap-frog their phone firmwares to modern specifications without compromising on the traditional user experiences that Japanese users require.

This also has the long-term benefit of finally making their products export-ready (e.g. Sharp’s Galapagos is heading to the US with Android) and cutting down unnecessary R&D previously spent on replicating modern OS features on Symbian. Sharp’s new Android smartphones, such as the IS12SH with 3D cameras, are basically ready for the overseas market with a simple firmware change.

Sharp IS12SH Android smartphone

In the long run, Android is essentially going to win by default in Japan simply due to the lack of alternatives. One day, Japanese school girls will be buying Android clamshells and they won’t even notice the difference. This transition may also prove to be an excellent opportunity for Japanese hardware makers to re-enter the international market after losing badly to companies like Samsung and Nokia.

I for one welcome our new Android overlords.

I’ve long been a keen observer in the growing war of opinions over the future of intellectual property rights. Just a few days ago, ABC, NBC and CBS decided to block Google TV devices from streaming from their websites, joining Hulu in what appears to be a last-ditch effort in forcing Google to cough up concessions it really shouldn’t have to. This got me thinking, so I shall leave a few notes here for my future reference.

Google TV

Google TV is basically Google’s attempt to remake Microsoft’s failed WebTV concept from the 90s, i.e. an integrated web-connected set-top box or TV that combines the functions of DVR, web browser, media player and content aggregator.

There are many cynical arguments against the concept of web-based TV, some of them valid, but it looks increasingly clear that the future of television lies with a flexible delivery system that maximizes convenience for the consumer and not rigidly structured channels and cable packages that sell you two million channels so that you can watch one show. It is why Apple’s iTunes Store sells individual episodes instead of subscriptions to cable streams. I would even argue that the rise of BitTorrent is a stronger indication for this desire for convenience than anything else.

Therefore, it’s inevitable that something like Google TV will eventually be the way we consume media (other than a full-fledged computer) — a device integrated with the TV that is capable of telling us what new episodes are just released, provides us with the capability to search, organize and discover media content, allows us to instantly watch what we want to watch and comes with usable implementations of micro-transactions and targeted advertising to pay for the content. Google TV does not yet do all that and others have tried and failed spectacularly, but today’s Google probably has a better shot at this elusive goal than anyone else ever had.

This is of course a terrifying idea for the major networks. After all, bundling is how they have always sold television. If people can choose to consume the most popular shows directly, then the traditional association between popular franchises and their respective network’s brand name is greatly diminished. This threatens the very financial foundation of television networks: monetization through advertisements. (Interesting note: remember how there used to be no advertisements on cable channels because we already paid for the subscription? Hmm.)

So really, it’s understandable that they will do whatever to resist change in the short term. The problem is, will it work in the long run? And if it will not work, then is temporary resistance going to cause more harm than good?

My feeling is that the major networks know that the writing is on the wall, but they just can’t figure out what exactly the words say. They are buying time. They offer web streaming (within certain limits) on their own websites to people with computers, and it should be obvious that Google TV is really just a general computing device running Android OS and Chrome browser.

Blocking Google TV is therefore not only technically silly but of dubious practical value. It really shouldn’t matter to the networks whether the end user streams the content they offer for free on their websites with a Macbook running Safari, a self-built Linux desktop running Firefox or an Android mini computer running Chrome.

If Google chooses to fight the fight, it can easily bypass the filter by changing the default setting for an existing user agent string option in Chrome and have it report itself as a regular PC. (You can argue about DMCA‘s anti-circumvention provisions, but it’s quite obvious that user agent filtering can hardly count as copyright protection.)

But Google is not going to that extreme (but it does quietly let the users have the option to do so) because it too knows that the writing is on the wall. Why be an asshole when you know that you are going to win?

The networks are threatened by the idea that Google TV sets out to promote the unbundling of TV shows and in doing so dilute the value of traditional network channels, but this idea is not new at all. Nothing Google TV does is new to those of us who have long been able to do the same on our computers. The problem is that Google TV sets out to reinvent the idea of television itself, instead of being sold merely as a computer that happens to play videos. Or in other words, the problem is that Google TV is connected to a TV instead of a monitor, even if the distinction is more imaginary than real.

Ultimately, just as YouTube survived the lawsuits and criticisms directed at it by major content producers, Google TV, or something similar to it, will prevail. My feeling is that the major networks will eventually relent and deal with Google TV when they figure out how to monetize it properly. But for now, they have to take ridiculous measures like this to assert their control and to get a better deal when that eventuality comes.

The distinction between computers and televisions is becoming more and more meaningless. While waiting for television to catch up with the Internet, people like me will stick to BitTorrent. It offers the convenience promised by a post-television future today, but has the unfortunate drawback of providing no compensation to the content owner. But as the end user, the latter is not my concern. Television networks could learn a thing or two from Crunchyroll.

<3 Google. I feel totally motivated to blog now.

Anyway, it’s not like I haven’t been keeping up with the latest season. I’m currently following Hayate no Gotoku, Claymore, Nagasarete Airantou, Lucky Star, Romeo x Juliet, Bokurano and Darker Than Black. This is about the number of series I’ve been following for every season for the past year or so. I just need to find a bit more time for blogging… I wonder if you guys will mind if I blog more about non-anime related topics? My Real Lifeâ„¢ recently has been really… exciting. LOL.