Filed under: iPhone
Domo arigato, the iPhone is coming to Japan
The internationalization of the iPhone continues as SoftBank Mobile, Japan's third-largest mobile operators, has announced that it has signed an agreement with Apple to sell the iPhone in the "Land of the Rising Sun" later this year.Although not detailed in the press release, I expect that the Japanese iPhone will be very different, internally, from its counterparts from other parts of the world. Not only will the phone have to be W-CDMA (GSM is not deployed in Japan, though some other SoftBank phones are dual-band GSM/W-CDMA for international roaming), there may be other locks tying the phone to the carrier.
Update: To clarify, the next generation iPhone will be 3G, or UMTS based, but the bands used by US carriers are different than those used in Japan (and in Europe and other parts of the world for that matter). Whether or not the phones will be able to switch between bands without some sort of hardware unlock remains to be seen.
Thanks to everyone who sent this in!
[via: Reuters]
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Dinesh said 7:44AM on 6-04-2008
oh nice!
Finally some confirmation of the 3G iPhone and it's upcoming arrival here in Japan.
I wonder what their plans will be like? Currently they offer a data plan for specific smartphones for 5000 yen (note 48$) a month with a weird limit.
Hopefully they'll be more reasonable with the iPhone.
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Ryan Trevisol said 7:56AM on 6-04-2008
How awesome would Styx at WWDC be? Domo Arigato, Mr. El-Jobso.
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DC said 4:46PM on 6-04-2008
It would suck, because Dennis DeYoung isn't with them anymore. Tommy Shaw can't sing Mr. Robato.
manron said 8:25AM on 6-04-2008
It has been also confirmed today (in a very brief press release - http://saladeprensa.telefonica.es/documentos/iPhone_SpainPR_vfinal040608english.pdf) that Telefónica will be selling the iPhone in Spain "later this year".
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Dap! said 8:26AM on 6-04-2008
W-CDMA is commonly known as 3G, therefore the rumored 3G iPhone will work fine in Japan.
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Dap! said 8:29AM on 6-04-2008
In follow-up to myself, also note that W-CDMA and UMTS basically refer to the same thing. Therefore, for our purposes, 3G = UMTS = W-CDMA.
Christina Warren said 9:12AM on 6-04-2008
Right, but the bands that they operate on are different. The spectrum is different. The underlying technology is essentially the same but the way it has been implemented in the US (to take advantage of existing GSM infrastructure) is different).
Dap! said 10:43AM on 6-04-2008
Christina Warren, the underlying technology is EXACTLY the same; the only difference between WCDMA at 2000MHz and WCDMA at 850MHz, 1900MHz, or 2100MHz is the frequency! Your article reads as though you have only a very basic understanding of the subject at best!
DJCarbon43 said 11:56AM on 6-04-2008
Wow, your an ass. Thats what she said.
RWhitney said 8:32AM on 6-04-2008
W-CDMA ≠ CDMA ?
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Dinesh Lincoln said 8:34AM on 6-04-2008
Yeah W-CDMA is NOT CDMA..
nuthatch said 8:51AM on 6-04-2008
Christina Warren needs to update/rewrite this. It is clearly evidence of 3G, not CDMA, which is barking up the wrong tree entirely. Japan is too small a market for Apple to profitably make a unique phone just for them.
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Lee said 8:58AM on 6-04-2008
NOOOOOOOOOOO! This is all wrong! It should be DoCoMo! I went into a two year contract to lower my bill because for sure DoCoMo would want the iPhone...sh*t!
I'm calling someone about this...and using my non-existent Japanese skills to fix it...errr...or paying the cancelation fee to DoCoMo...
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Rowdehaj said 9:07AM on 6-04-2008
DÔZO YOROSHIKU, IPHONE-SAN D:
Now on to the bloody Netherlands! o_o
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Justin D said 9:23AM on 6-04-2008
" Japan is too small a market for Apple to profitably make a unique phone just for them."
Although, the cost of radios is pretty damn cheap. I'm betting that Apple made the hardware platform pretty radio agnostic. This way they could switch out radio modules (CDMA, W-CDMA instead of GSM) without any heavy reengineering.
Not to make it sound like "Oh yeah you just pop the back off that bad boy and switch out the module," but you can bet they have a plan in case something with AT&T goes south and they need to go to a carrier that might not be GSM-based.
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Christina Warren said 9:41AM on 6-04-2008
That's what I'm thinking too. Plus, this would solve lots of Apple's issues with phones being purchased in one country to be sold in another -- if the radios are set for one area, even if it can be switched out in manufacturing, it'll make it that much harder for anyone trying to sell a grey market phone.
JaG said 9:30AM on 6-04-2008
Hey, why should it be different hardware, last time I was in Japan, my European Nokia E61 was perfectly usable on Softbank's 3G network!
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Christina Warren said 9:49AM on 6-04-2008
It's possible that the 3G iPhone will have multiple bands, but I kind of doubt it -- I think they'll just put in whatever radio is used in that country/for that carrier. The E61 is a world phone and can operate on both GSM and W-CDMA (that is the main difference between that and the E62 which was available in North America - that and the E62 didn't have wifi, which makes it suck that much more) and most SoftBank phones are dual-mode GSM/W-CDMA.
artifex said 12:06PM on 6-04-2008
Christina, how many bands do the current GSM iPhones have access to? 2, 3, 4? They seem to be used around the world, even in grey market areas.
It would be unlike Apple to switch to a "just DOESN'T work" paradigm for world travelers/businesspeople, the ones who have the most cash to buy these to begin with, don't you think?
Christina Warren said 12:16PM on 6-04-2008
Right, the iPhone is a quad-band GSM phone so it'll work pretty much everywhere that uses GSM, whether it is on 850/900/1800/1900.
For most countries, from what some of the commenters more knowledgeable about the UMTS spectrum than I, it looks like the technology will at least exist for the phones to work while roaming internationally. However, I imagine they'll do the same sort of carrier-lock thing that prevents using any other SIM while in that country. Japan has pretty stringent phone-to-carrier locking policies, which was why I was hypothesizing that there might be some internal changes/locks on their iPhone. 5 hours later, I might have been premature - I just know how difficult it is to use a phone tied to one carrier on another in Japan.