You'll get my PC when you pry it from my cold, dead hands.

"Anecdotally, this bares out" should be "Anecdotally, this bears out."

/I'll take Grammar Nazi for $200, Alex.

@Sqube: It's possible that he actually meant bares out :p

Japanese people don't need PC's. They already have highly augmented cerebral CPU's that calculate faster than any supercomputer here in yankeeville.

I can't stand trying to do normal PC functions on my cell phone. It is quite literally physically painful to try to accomplish things on a teeny tiny cell phone screen and keypad that I can do in an instant on my PC. I will never switch over to a cell phone to do things better done on a PC.

Also... PC's nowadays are pretty powerfull. I using a 6 year old PC at home, (a hot rod in it's heyday) it is now a low end PC at best.

Unless you are an avid gamer requiring a newer, faster, better model every 2 years, 99.99% of most PC's 5 years old (or maybe older) are still good today for business and home use (internet + email).

That also accounts for lower sales.

You don't need a new coffee maker or toaster until it quits or is obsolete.

@Sqube: Dam, yew beet mi two wit.

wen ah rider iz gone to yews klee chez, day cud at leased geddit wright.

I would never give up my laptop. There are things that I can do on it that I couldn't on my phone. I am a web developer and have to be able to make updates no matter where I am. I couldn't imagine trying to run a browser, text editor and a terminal on my phones screen.

"PCs Might Be Losing Ground in Japan, But Not Because Their Cellphones Are Amazing"

OK so if Japans cellphones aren't "amazing" then that would make the US cellphones, what? "Disappointing"

(chuckle)

The question shouldnt be, what would make you give up your pc.. But "what would stop you from buying a new pc every year or two"

Realistically, you can program or web develop, photo edit, write or do a huge bulk of "work" on computers 5 years old without too much hassle.

Bump up the ability to do "lesiure" activities on mobiles, and my home time would be spent less so on the computer and more on a suitable smaller mobile device.

At the moment, people seem to want that, so go half way and buy the best laptop they can. How many people do you know who sit in their sitting room, on the sofa, with a tv in the background, and a laptop on their lap, tapping away on the internet, AND they can get some work done if they need.

I would personally relegate my computers to "work" if i could find a device that allowed me to browse the internet and instant message at LEAST as well as i can on a laptop.

So im guessing a cheap laptop would do it, but why get a cheap one when i could get one a bit better and have it available for work...

Japan is just freakin different. I lived there for over a year, do you know how many times I bought something with an ATM/credit card ? Probably 3 times. I probably use it 3 times A DAY now that I'm back in the states for the nonce. Many department stores don't even accept them. You can use them at some of the convenience stores though...which is ironically where you go to pay your utillity bills. But guess what! You can't use your credit card for your bills which may be in excess of $100, but you can buy an ice cream with it (which I highly recommend, japanese ice cream is yummy).

Yeah, Japan has a serious dichotomy goin on when it comes to tech. Cutting edge or old as the hills. There IS NO middle ground...

Kotaku-ite here.
While Japan was well ahead in technology in the past, it's general ignorance concerning PCs will, unless checked, will lead to the country regressing and starting to look "backward". Unless reversed, Japan will be left in the dust as the West continues it's PC adoption, and all integrated devices turn into PCs. It's already started happening in gaming; most recent interviews with J developers include some comment about how much gaming development has stagnated, and some companies have already adopted Western practices, such as using another company's gaming engine.

The reason is obvious. Kanji keyboards. Have you ever tried to use one? Its damn near impossible. I tried when I was in Tokyo. Of course, I don't speak Japanese, but still, that keyboard was just not something I could adapt to.

;-)

I dunno about these numbers. What is the current adoption rate of PCs in Japan?

Ahh, shit, premature post up there. Anyway, what I wanted to say was, there is the possibility that PC were adopted widely at an extraordinary pace at a certain point in the recent past and hence the PC adoption rate has reached, and surpassed, the saturation point.

I mean, like everybody and their cats have PCs in Japan currently. My mother in law not only has one but is blogging with it, and frankly, she's the most tech-unsavvy person I've ever met after my own mother. Think also about the adoption rate of broadband in Japan. Probably not as ubiquitous as S. Korea, but I'm sure it's still quite staggering. And if households have broadband, they definitely have at least one PC (because broadband in Japan is rarely tied-in with something like cable TV). And all that happened in the past 6-7 years.

My point is that, maybe a lot of people, who really didn't NEED PCs to begin with, bought one anyway in the last 6-7 years, and realizing they didn't need them, combined with the fact that cellphones can now do almost everything they ever did with their PCs (e-mail and occasionally browse Amazon.co.jp), have ceased to upgrade their PCs.

I don't see too much difference between people who really need PCs between the two countries (US and Japan). E.g., a Japanese college student will need a PC as much as any US college student.

>> You'd have to pay me SO much more than my computer's worth to get me to not be on it.

what would it take for me to ditch my desktop? either an OQO with leopard and sprint power vision, or someone who could make my CLIÉ UX50 look like the iPhone's OS, but still keep the 3rd-party app support and power of Palm OS. or actually, fuck the CLIÉ, it's gonna take a mac-ified and EV-DO enabled OQO. although a UMPC running leopard is still kind of a handheld PC, not a completely new idea to replace the PC.

Well, PC's haven't really come out with anything beyond subtle incremental improvements for most typical users. The Japanese are a poor society to base future worldwide trends of technology on as it is very different over here. I remember 20 years ago trying to convince the president of JVC that the Karaoke machines he was trying to have us sell were not going to be accepted in the states, what a fiasco that was... But back on topic, the size of households make the idea of large or multiple boxen untenable. Most primary email addresses are locked to peoples cell phone carriers, and gaming is done on consoles or handhelds for most users. There is just no reason to buy a new PC if the one you have still works for most users over here. Plus, just disposing of your old PC is expensive over here, you have to buy special stickers to put on the box or the garbage men won't pick it up. The only thing driving new PC's are games targeting a very small subset of users and Vista, and we all know how compelling Vista is.

And as far as the phones go, other than the lack of an iPhone, Japanese phones kick some serious ass. My unit, by no means cutting edge, has a real autofocus 2MP camera, giant hi-res screen, tons of battery life, MP4 video and audio player, 1G of built in memory and a micro SD slot (with another Gig in it), oh and it gets perfect digital TV reception... Screw the shoddy crap that I had to suffer with in the states. (Can't wait for an iPhone though...)

@Akin: Yeah. And this is why Japan, this tiny island is second ranked in economy.

And having a umpc is still a pc by the way.

I think that while it's fun to speculate, reading into it too much either one way or the other is going overboard. Japan won't go into some precipitous decline if they don't have PCs but neither have they "outgrown" the PC market.

i've never understood why people insist on lugging their laptop to a hotspot in the first place. is your home that bad that you would rather sit with a bunch of strangers at a cramped table at starbucks so everybody can watch you facebook? i think its that japan just gets that computers should stay at home or at work.

@mwalker05: Sometimes it's just nice to get out of the house. Japanese culture is a whole lot different. You don't see very many Japanese using cellphones in public areas-do bad more Americans don't follow their lead there. Nine times out of ten, someone here talking on a cell phone is talking about something that could have waited. Think of all the years before cell phones- we made it just fine. Also, I've noticed more restaurants putting up signs that state "No cell phones while dining ". There's nothing worse than having to listen to crap while you're trying to enjoy a quiet dinner. Oh, and as far as using this, I can hardly see the numbers on my phone-how in the world would it be if I actually tried to use it instead of my laptop?

@mwalker05:

I wish I was in Japan now to see how its change from when I lived there in 1990 to 1992. Back then having a correcting typewriter was the bomb and if you had a PC you were a BBS nerd.

They don't need computers because they got robots doing all of their work and surfing the Net.