Japan has traditionally been the most advanced mobile market in the world, but right now it’s lagging behind the US, UK, Germany and France in terms of getting the iPhone. You can’t buy Apple’s handset in Japan yet, although that could soon change.
Apple is reportedly in talks with two separate operators there: market leader NTT DoCoMo, and third-placed Softbank. DoCoMo appears to be in pole position, since its president has already met with Steve Jobs (and thus presumably encountered Steve’s Reality Distortion Field that makes giving up a chunk of iPhone voice and data revenues seem sensible).
I could be wrong here, but isn’t one of the things about Japan that the operators only run 3G networks? If so, I’m not sure what that means for the resolutely 2.5G iPhone - would Apple have to wait to launch in Japan until it has a 3G iPhone ready to go?
(via ITWire)
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