Future Now
The IFTF Blog
Why Aren't the Japanese Buying PCs Anymore?
AP has an interesting story this morning ("PCs Losing Their Relevance in Japan") about the decline of PC sales in Japan in recent years.
The PC's role in Japanese homes is diminishing, as its once-awesome monopoly on processing power is encroached by gadgets such as smart phones that act like pocket-size computers, advanced Internet-connected game consoles, and digital video recorders with terabytes of memory.
The stats aren't that grim though...
Technorati Tags: culture, information technology, Japan
In fact, it actually looks like were hitting the top of the S-curve, and entering a maturing market. The fact that consoles have stolen much of the high-end game market, thus sapping the need to upgrade PCs, these aren't that surprising.
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.
NEC's and Sony's sales have been falling since 2006 in Japan. Hitachi Ltd. said Oct. 22 it will pull out of the household computer business entirely in an effort to refocus its sprawling operations.
But already, there is speculation that this is a sign of things to come in other major markets.
Japan's PC market is already shrinking, leading analysts to wonder whether Japan will become the first major market to see a decline in personal computer use some 25 years after it revolutionized household electronics -- and whether this could be the picture of things to come in other countries.
"The household PC market is losing momentum to other electronics like flat-panel TVs and mobile phones," said Masahiro Katayama, research group head at market survey firm IDC.
Still, I wonder if this is yet another example of local divergence in an increasingly complex consumer electronics marketplace. I definitely saw trends towards this in Korea during my time there over 2002-2004. PCs were regarded as a sort of 2nd rate device to snazzy $700 mobiles, game consoles, and smart appliances. They were basically dumb terminals for getting on the net.
The US on the other hand, is a true laptop culture (which also I think has embedded in it many of our views about privacy, property, security, and the built envirnment - we like big, autonomous devices). I've tried for years to ditch my laptop here in the US - for a Sidekick II (2001), Blackberry and thumb drive (2005) and an iPhone (2007), but the infrastructure in the US just isn't ready for it. Try finding a public Internet terminal in the US that doesn't suck - the usage model is all built around carrying your own fully-fledged portable PC around.
So if Japanese use the 'net and PCs and teh very urban environment differently, so why shouldn't we expect a slightly different mix of devices to access it?