Japan: Conformist Culture + Lack of IDNs = Less PC’s and More Portal Surfing
PCs losing their relevance in Japan. Both for desktops and laptops. Overall PC shipments in Japan have fallen for five consecutive quarters, the first ever drawn-out decline in PC sales in a key market, according to IDC. The trend shows no signs of letting up: In the second quarter of 2007, desktops fell 4.8 percent and laptops 3.1 percent.
http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/071104/japan_bye_bye_pcs.html?.v=2
You could argue that a lack of IDN’s have led to less Japan-language websites… so more traffic is flowing to portals like Yahoo in Japan. Portals have a greater percentage of Internet traffic so there’s a greater incentive to create browsing experiences for telco platforms, phones, game consoles and web-appliances. Also, seems like much of this flows back to the fact that Japan is a more conformist, inwardly looking culture. Fewer Japanese are venturing out of the portal’s bounds to test/explore… and if I can access the portal on my Nintendo Wii .. who needs a PC?
One thing missing from the article (and your comments on it) is the fact that people aren’t rushing to throw out their existing PCs. PC ownership in Japan is already pretty widespread, so people are just hanging on to their existing (”powerful enough”) machines longer. That would definitely account for the sales decline: a mature market versus a growing one sucking in new PC users for the first time. So the trend isn’t as worrying as it might look (unless you’re a PC manufacturer, of course)