Hi there anonymous coward ;-) I am not afraid to disclose my real identity. I am that Nobi Hayashi, that guy in person. And I DO have iPhone; actually, I even have the first generation iPhone and now I have three of them (excluding the one that was stolen in San Francisco on the show floor of MACWORLD EXPO in January). And I totally agree with you that carrying P905i isn't going to generate the same kind of enthusiasm. As a matter of fact, to me, those people who has P905i in that ugly champagne gold color look more 'lame' than carrying any other Japanese phones. And that phone is not my weapon of choice. My weapon of choice is iPhone. (And second weapon of choice is INFOBAR 2. I didn't even charge P905i and search for it for hours ). You might ask what's wrong. Well, what's wrong is the article quoted here. This author Brian Chen based the article from two years old interview and he added a few words I have never said to support the conclusion he wanted to write; he seem to hate Japan. http://torley.com/how-not-to-handle-blog-comments When I twitter about how I was misquoted, he modified the article and attributed the "iPhone =lame" quote to Daiji Hirata who also never said it; his filing another complaint to the article. Anyway, to read the full story, you have to come to my blog: http://blog.nobi.cc/2009/02/my-view-of-how-iphone-is-doing-in-japan-by-nobi-nobuyuki-hayashi.html

and added something I never said. I have shown iPhones to vast number of people and none of them ever told me iPhone looked lame. All of them 'Wowed'. Do you know where I am lecturing? I am lecturing at some Japanese phone manufacturers saying if they don't change their mindset and take a serious look at iPhone, they will be ten years behind; they already are. The real price of Japanese advanced looking is $700 - 800 + You can buy a few iPhones with it or with that cost Apple can put as much (or even more) unnecessary and hard to use craps but because Apple understands what users want, they have a vision about how the future of communication should be, they chose not to.

I saw a discussion about the size of manufactures in the comment; I have been so busy and tired since that Wired article came out and I don't feel like reading all the comments here. Let me tell you an interesting thing. Some of you may think Japan has advanced phones. Do you know how much worldwide market share they have? 5% is the share of all the Japanese handset manufacturers combined. SHARP is by far the largest in Japan and they have about 20% share here in Japan, which means SHARP'S worldwide share is about 1% = about the same (or less) than Apple. Do you still think they are serious competitor of iPhone?

HI I am Nobuyuki Hayashi (aka Nobi) referred in this article. I have to point out you are using the quote I have never mentioned. Perhaps, Brian, the author of Wired article thought I would never read his article but I did. After I blamed him for this, he redirected that "iPhone = lame" quote to Daiji Hirata which made him upset because he never said that either. :-( Anyway, to see how I really think iPhone is doing, read the post on my blog: http://blog.nobi.cc/ If you want to keep arguing the delusion about Japan, you can stay here. If you want to do a serious discussion, please come to my blog or quote from my blog and forget about that "iPhone look lame in Japan"; it's not just me and Daiji but I haven't seen one person in Japan who would say iPhone looks lame. And I have been lecturing how big a threat iPhone is to the Japanese handset manufacturers almost 4-5 times a month since Jan. 2008; I have shown the device to 12 months x 4 lectures x 150 or so people + many parties (I had one big iPhone party yesterday celebrating the launch of Evangelion application for iPhone and I will have another one tonight with 100+ people in Mita, Tokyo ).