I spent most of yesterday hooking up the three remaining ALTs with mobile phones, from the same shop that sold me my own phone. Things went smoothly, I talked over all the contract options with the new recruits, they picked out their phones, stamped all the paperwork, and we made arrangements to pick up the activated and tested phones around 7:30 that evening, before the closing time of 8pm. Things were going smoothly… but there’s always a hitch. The staff and I had both made the (reasonable) assumption that all the phone models in the store supported English. I mean, it should be pretty basic stuff, right? But when we picked up the phones we discovered that two of the three models they had selected didn’t have even basic English support.
The local staff went above and beyond, staying well after their posted closing time to get everything switched over. But the fact is they shouldn’t have had to. There was no good reason they had to stay extra hours or go through all the trouble of calling up the au center. Toshiba, Sharp, Sanyo, Kyocera, Mitsubishi, and every other phone maker: this is 2007. Data storage is cheap. The translations have been done. Pull your heads out of your asses, and put the translations on ALL of your goddamn phones. You know, it costs money to put in a nice camera chip and lens, it costs money to put in a better battery, it costs money to make the plastic shell in 15 different colors. I can even understand that it costs money to license the dictionary software that comes on every keitai. But adding an English option in the software doesn’t cost you a single fucking cent! Jesus, IR data transfer and micro SD cards are a standard feature on every phone you sell, but you can’t be bothered to make bilingual support a standard feature?? What the hell.
You just haven’t realized yet that you are living in a foreign country and as an English speaker you are a minority. They are not going to cater to you! Underlying this: Do they really care about foreigners?
it’s the subtle Japanese way of saying, “Learn Japanese, you foreigner!”
:)
How are you Jeff.
Pity then, because that’s a big opportunity that’s been lost for them.
Research In Motion, who manufactures BlackBerry have been extremely keen in penetrating Japan, and they have fast tracked their Japanese compatible OS roll out and we have them now. If you were serious about business and expanding your customer base, then it makes perfect sense for them to implement it.
I guess it just got forgotten somewhere along the ladder when the junior said to the kacho, “But sir, what about your approval on the English option?” “Ah, there aren’t that many people who’d use it. This is Japan.” without realising the real market opportunity out there.
It’s interesting, because with the iPods Apple put all of their supported languages on every model, and the language selection is in a pretty intuitive place. I was able to change the language from French to Japanese on a friend’s iPod and I can’t even read French that well. But the point is, if you’re going for a global market it’s actually CHEAPER to make one item with all the languages on it, and simply ask the user what language they want the first time they start it up. Instead of designing and building 20 products, you’re designing one. If you have a surplus in Malaysia and demand in France you can just ship them and sell them because it’s the exact same product.
I know it’s not that simple with phones because of different network types, but with modular software you can design the interfaces to support GSM and CDMA and whatever else, and then dump all the language files on there. Hey, if it autodetects which radio chipset is being used, that’s even better. This stuff is all basic business knowledge for global companies. I guess these guys just aren’t real global players. Shame.
Yeah, coming to think of it, the level of de-internationalisation (domesticisation?) of Japanese phones are pretty amazing.
And only now, they are saying “Wow, we better start signing up for roaming agreements with overseas carriers and add extra chips to support their radio” when they could have just stuck to the GSM/CDMA combination all along.