Question of the Day: Will the iPhone Win Over Japan?  It's
official: the iPhone is heading to the land of the rising sun.
But will it win the hearts of Japan? After all, Japan is pretty
much the ultimate testing ground for phones. No one takes their
cells more seriously than the Japanese. These are the people who
not only text message with the best of them, but watch TV and
even write novels on their mobiles. It's almost like they enjoy
the restriction of accomplishing so much on a punishing,
oversized handheld. Then again, the iPod is quite popular in
Japan, the iPhone has a unique UI and brands carry a lot of
weight in the country.   Interestingly enough, SoftBank, the
telecom carrier offering the iPhone, is a second-tier brand in
Japan. They don't have nearly the dominance of Docomo or au, and
the company falls back on heavy celebrity endorsements (like
Cameron Diaz) to interest the public in their service. Described
to us as "the darkhorse" by Japan-native Gawker writer Brian
Ashcraft, he added that landi