There’s one thing I really don’t understand though: smartphones have been made available in Japan for I don’t know how long (iPhones and Android), yet we still don’t find those keitai features for typical smartphones. I would be surprised if all of Japan have keitai phones…it would make sense to have those keitai features for everyone, including smartphone owners. Correct me if I’m wrong.

Yes Android would dominate Japan, but only if japanese carriers and manufacturers would wake up and realize there’s also a market for smartphones…

And its not as simple as swapping the GSM radio for a CDMA one either. The architecture between the 2 systems are vastly different. Basic things that are taken for granted in GSM (like overflowing SMS’es) don’t exist in CDMA2000. Just look at how long it took Apple to get their iphone to work with Verizon (one of the largest CDMA operators in the world).

Android may dominate Japan, but unless the Japanese hardware OEM’s can shake their shackles from their carrier overloads, they’re not going to make much headway outside Japan (Sony Ericsson may be the exception).

Which is a shame really, as the Japanese are brilliant in hardware design.

In all seriousness though, as an Android device owner, I welcome the advancement of the platform in Japan. Android is extremely versatile and can be modified to fit it’s intended userbase. That’s something Apple will never do. They expect the userbase to conform to them instead ;)
So while it satisfies the tech geek in me, it can also be easy enough for normal school girls to use without a second thought. And, yeah, that’s why Android will win.

One observation about the state of software engineering in Japan:
Laziness is actually one of the greatest assets a programmer can have. A sufficiently lazy programmer will eventually reduce his effective workload, and by extension the workload of those around him, to a value approaching Zero – just look at the crazy package management and build automation systems available on GNU/POSIX platforms.

Laziness is, unfortunately, not generally a characteristic of your typical Japanese person. Kicking back on a sofa and having a beer while your code builds itself is probably just not something that flies well in a culture where keeping up appearances is important. As a result, there is basically a meme that states that writing lots of custom, intricate code in your application will result in something that runs better.

In some ways, this is true in a limited sense – writing everything by hand does generate results that work extremely well in a user’s hands. However, the realities of economics kick in, and suddenly it’s clear that there just aren’t enough programmers to go around doing this for every piece of software that gets written. On the other hand, there is a lack of extensible, generic frameworks due to this very practice. So in the end, it’s hard to write any good amount of software when adhering to this meme.

Also the thing is that keitai phones are basically featurephones with overpowered specifications. There isn’t the same kind of app-lock that happens with smartphones when you switch from Android to iOS and lose all your Market purchases.

If you have Androids running on clamshells offering the same network services as previous clamshells, the end users will notice nothing. Most features offered by keitai are network-based services provided by the ISPs and have nothing to do with the software platform.

I don’t think OS fragmentation is really an issue here. In fact, fragmentation has basically always been the default state of business for the industry. So this shouldn’t matter from the manufacturers’ perspective anyway.

Especially in Japan’s case where the service providers are basically the ones who dictate the technical specifications for phones. As long as all the Android phones run the providers’ list of custom apps like train schedulers and mobile payments, no one will care how far the phones deviate from vanilla Android.

Fragmentation matters only in terms of competition for apps with iOS and WP7. But iOS and WP7 are incapable of meeting the list of functionalities that keitai serve in the Japanese market, so they don’t matter in this case.

NegativeZero:

WP7 threw away all its roots and is further away from being a “corporate phone” than iOS. In terms of design philosophy, Android is actually a lot closer to WM6.5 and is similarly suited for the long list of software customizations that Japanese OEMs like to make.

Other than maybe Nokia, I don’t think anyone is going to receive permission from Microsoft to customize the WP7 UX and that’s just not going to fly in the Japanese market.

The problem with WP7, and Microsoft in general, in Japan is basically a cultural one and it goes far deeper than just language support. Well actually, I have doubts about WP7′s future in markets outside of Japan too. It’s basically dead in Singapore despite officially launching here.

I think that’s what DM is talking about. Low range, who knows.