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Apple's iPod a Huge Hit in Japan

Posted on: Friday, 20 August 2004, 06:00 CDT

by Yuri Kageyama

Tokyo (AP) -- When Kunitake Ando, the president of Sony, showed off the new Walkman intended to counter Apple's iPod portable music player, he held the gadget at the gala event upside down.

That may have been a bad omen.

The iPod is proving a colossal hit on the Japanese electronics and entertainment giant's home ground. The tiny white machine is catching on as a fashion statement and turning into a cultural icon here, much the same way it won a fanatical following in the United States.

Apple Computer has launched a marketing campaign in Japan with catchy TV spots and ads painted on Tokyo trains. It opened its first Apple store in Tokyo's Ginza district late last year and is opening one in Osaka this month.

"I only want something I can believe in," said Hiroyuki Sakurai, a 21-year-old design-school student, who bought an iPod recently at the bustling Apple store.

When the colorful and smaller iPod mini went on sale in July, more than 1,000 people waited in line for the store to open. The waiting list for the new version is now several weeks long.

Although Apple does not release regional sales figures, six of the eight top-selling music players in Japan are iPod models, according to GfK Japan, a market research company. The largest, a 40-gigabyte version, sells for $406 in Japan.

Last month, Sony unveiled the hard-drive Network Walkman - a product that goes head to head against the iPod and promises longer battery life. Sony will not release sales figures for Network Walkman, but it says they are meeting targets.

Atsushi Kubota, Sony marketing manager, said his company wanted to promote a wide range of music players in the Walkman lineup, including various types of disks and memory cards, not just the hard drive. Walkman sales of all kinds - including the new digital model - total 20 million units a year, according to Sony, compared with more than 3.7 million iPods shipped worldwide so far.

Sony Senior Marketing Manager Atsushi Kubota shows the Network Walkman NW-HD1. Credit: AP

Sony has time to catch up to iPod, but iPod has a head start, said Kazuya Yamamoto, an analyst at UFJ Tsubasa Securities in Tokyo. "To come up with an innovative gadget that links well with software - that's something Sony should have done."

The iPod has caught on in Japan even though Apple does not yet offer the iTunes Music Store, a download service.

Apple will offer the Japanese equivalent of iTunes within the next year, at prices comparable with the 99 cents a tune it charges in the United States, said Yoshiaki Sakito, an Apple vice president and former Sony employee.

That is almost certain to change the music-download industry in Japan by winning over those who now opt for cheaper CD rentals they can record at home. Commercial downloads now cost about $2.30 a tune in Japan.

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