I don't mean to offend anyone by this, but one thing about Japan is that they're extremely brand conscious and put a lot of stock in fads. A product can sink or swim based on how "cool" it is in any market in the world, but especially in Japan. If this is really a trend and not just a blip, it shows that the average Japan consumer has really had a change in thinking.

I'm by no means a Microsoft fanboy, but the article citing these numbers has no idea of the computer situation in Japan.

Microsoft computers are far far more dominant here than in the US, Apple is virtually unknown outside the Ipod, and even that loses out to Sony Memory Stick mp3 players.

The Japanese PC (or pasucon) market is in freefall, as most Japanese people just use their cellphone to browse the internet and check email. There also isn't much PC gaming going on. Virtually all businesses are PC based, and they wouldn't upgrade to vista on their aging hardware.

With such an anemic PC market, very very very few Japanese would buy an OS-only, whether Mac or Windows. Things are meant to be disposable here, so if they need a new computer (or car) they throw out their old one and get a new one. None of those sales would show up in these numbers. So I think you are cherry picking a small, insignificant data point in order to manufacture something that just isn't there.

I completely agree that Mac is on a roll in the US, and could see a large upswing in market share. But this is simply not going to happen in Japan.

>my $.019 CDN

that made me laugh out loud... thanks for making my day..

>> Apple is virtually unknown outside the Ipod, and even that loses out to Sony Memory Stick mp3 players.

OK, that's so full of s*** I don't even believe you live in Japan. Sony has not been on top of Apple in terms of MP3 players for like 4 years. You're either pulling that out of your a**, or relying on numbers from half a decade ago. iPods have dominated ever since the iPod mini came out.

http://bcnranking.jp/category/subcategory_0004.html

Here's the current Top 10 in Japan. Yeah, that's right, not another maker in sight, and the top 10 spots dominating more than 50% of sales in Japan.

And Apple is virtually unknown outside of iPods? Give me an effing break. Mac market share in Japan is second only to the US, and the latest figure I've found from back in July was 4.8%, but the current line-up looks like this:

http://bcnranking.jp/category/subcategory_0011.html

where if you add up the percentages, the share is well abovve 8% -- granted, those large numbers probably come from the fact that the top selling iMac with 4.5% share is a hot new product, but still, to claim that Macs are not known in Japan is ignorance to the Nth degree. Japan has ALWAYS been more receptive towards Macs than any other country in the world besides the US, and at some points in the past (like late 90s), I believe the Mac market share in Japan was actually higher than that of the US market.

That's why Apple has ALWAYS had a sweet spot for the Japanese market. I mean look at Leopard, with the gorgeous (and very expensive) built-in Japanese fonts and a J-J/J-E dictionary and thesaurus to boot.



The Japanese PC (or pasucon) market

Oops, premature posting.

And finally, that would be "Pasocon". If you're learning Japanese, do it right ;-)

Yeah fine, right up to the last part and then it notes Apple sales of hardware has been on the decline... "modest gains" how does that compute with 59% and Apple being the majority OS? I'm missing something I'm sure... Apple news defies gravity as it surely does.