Well, I don’t have one here in my hands, so this is mostly conjecture, but I really am not all that impressed by what I’m reading about theiPhone from Apple. Why not? Because I had a better phone TWO YEARS AGO when I was here in Japan, not to mention the mind-bending stunts the cell phones are doing now here in Tokyo.
Phones are the primary bit if digital candy that everyone has. I know they are the primary bit because the cell phones take up the entire ground floor of the big electronics retailers (BicCamera, Yodobashi, Yamada Denki, etc.). Those retailers would not waste the most valuable real estate if cell phones were not the most profitable, highest volume, highest turnover (most Tokyoites keep cell phones about one year) items. With volume and turnover like this, the only place to compete is on functionality. Japanese mow send mail by _default_ on their cellphones, not their work computers. Young people, especially girls, access mail. photos, the internet, reservations, train schedules, and tunes all via their phones– rarely a desktop or laptop computer.
Wanna do business in Japan? One word for you:
keitai.
I promise I'm relevant 
[...] I told ya so. The iPhone isn’t doing so well in Japan, and has an uphill climb ahead of it. As [...]