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I think Japan should build software which competes with these “giants” rather than try beat them through regulation. Building good software is still in reach.

I think Japan should build software which competes with these “giants” rather than try beat them through regulation. Building good software is still in reach. You don’t need to have an Apple or Google behind you to be competitive. Especially in Japan where just making a native Japanese <whatever> will lead to dominance. Look at Line. It’s atrocious rubbish. Everyone in Japan uses it. Japan makes the worst software out of any developed nation I’ve ever seen. Even Nintendo stuff is mostly terrible. Sony is a joke.

sensanaty 2y ago
Or we can do both? Encourage competition from smaller businesses while curbing the power and influence of these behemoth monopolies that control basically all of modern human civilization. Apple, Google, Microsoft and all the rest of them should've been nuked into a trillion tiny little pieces years ago.
- bamboozled 2y ago
  Knowing Japan. This regulation isn’t about making your experience as consumer better.
  - throwaway2037 2y ago
    Then, what is it about?
    - bamboozled 2y ago
      Pleasing or protecting some mega corp.
hamasho 2y ago
There are some sweet spots where local tech companies can compete in markets even though their products are worse. But there's nothing close to Google Search or iPhone.
- ChainOfFools 2y ago
  What happened to the incredibly futuristic basis in the smartphone space that Japan had with NTT docomo back in the mid-late 90's? Was it motivated purely or mainly by a need for a workable kanji/kana interface for mobile texting, with no sense of the larger implications of such a capable system as a basis for a very comfortable head start 10 years later into the smartphone adoption cycle? It feels like such a perfect textbook example of a culture that embraces "how" much more than it embraces "why," a culture that is not endemic to Japan but actually quite common at various scales globally, because most of the time its the right mindset. But when it isn't, it becomes an enormous handicap.
  - hamasho 2y ago
    I'm not familiar with that era, but I think cell phones back then were more focused on hardware and brute-force style development than sophisticated software. It's unbelievable how tough it was to survive the NTT Docomo's R&D center, YRP. Depression and suicides were sadly common, which caused a lot of Japanese to avoid the IT industry for years...
  - Dalewyn 2y ago
    >What happened to the incredibly futuristic basis in the smartphone space that Japan had with NTT docomo back in the mid-late 90's? Nothing, really. Remember that most advancements in computing still happened outside of Japan (Windows 95, Pentium, et al.), or in the case of NAND flash happened in Japan but was shitcanned only to be picked up by the US. Japan never was great at tech beyond a certain point, but that only became really obvious in the 2000s when even their Galapagos phones were finally outdone.
  - numpad0 2y ago
    Docomo commissioned phone manufacturers to ship phones at half-year cycle. The idea was to sell it like women's clothing. But manufacturers didn't commoditize parts and optimize businesses for that cycle; instead they sped up and staggered development to match that cycle, in the process burning lots of cash and people's careers. By the time iPhone came out, the tech debts and bureaucratic overheads had grown so much that nothing could be done to save the industry and platform. Everything from devices to institutional knowledge and existing moats all went down the drain until enough was shed off that reasonably usable Android phones could be manufactured, but not much points were left in making those. > Was it motivated purely or mainly by ... I'm sure Docomo execs had sane long-term plans, but ideological and hierarchical thinking isn't Japanese forte so executions were counterproductive and/or micromanagement mess. Kanji/kana interface has nothing to do with it, all Nokia phones handled Japanese language perfectly fine, certainly more than adequately for ... a dozen model or so sold over a decade.
Dalewyn 2y ago
It's astonishing this comment is as heavily downvoted as it is because it hits Japan's problem at its core. Apple and Google are dominant because Japan simply cannot do software (and tech in general). They have no domestic players, so this conclusion is natural. Some amount of regulation might be necessary, but fundamentally Japan cannot break the US-held monopoly so long as they fail to bring their own players to market.
- bamboozled 2y ago
  I'm not on HN to make friends :) I do spend a lot of time in Japan though. A lot more then most down voters that's for sure. For most people visiting Japan, their first interaction will be buying a a train ticket for the NEX Airport express or the Shinkansen, it's a horrendous and confusing experience. Their interactions with Japanese software will only get worse from there however.
  - qiqitori 2y ago
    Hmm, I don't get anything in this thread. What's so bad about Nintendo's or the Sony PlayStation's software? From my perspective they're like... almost perfect, except for the fact that there are updates sometimes, but they're fast. What's so bad about JR's ticket vending machines? What could be improved?
  - unscaled 2y ago
    I think most of the confusing experience comes from the way that Japanese limited express paper tickets used to work. If you rode a limited express (like Shinkansen or Narita Express), you'd have to buy two tickets: the basic fare ticket and the express surcharge ticket. The basic fare ticket would also cover your non-express connections, so this was quite convenient in Japan's complex transit system. Japan still has that system in place, but the basic fare is usually replaced by your IC transit card or integrated into an eTicket (which contains both basic fare + express surcharge and is tied into your IC card). So if you buy a ticket to NEX on the Ekinet app you'll be offered a ticketless option, but you probably wouldn't know that means you still need to tap your Suica in order to pay the basic fare. Shinkansen trains are generally using eTickets, which would be even more confusing for visitors, but many visitors are using JR Pass which is completely outside the fare systems (but does need reserved seats). Most of this complexity is inherent complexity, not accidental complexity that comes from bad software. The main issues I've seen with the software in question are: Lack of English version (Ekinet), Complex registration flow (SmartEX) and flaky authentication (Ekinet). This is not a great UX, but the apps don't feel worse than train operator apps in other countries. These are not tech companies.
numpad0 2y ago
Japan had a strong flip phone ecosystem back when iPhone happened. Contactless payment, lootbox microtransactions, music downloads, GIF emojis, TV broadcast, multicore CPUs, Linux-based OS, biometrics, >326ppi displays before iPhone 4, 3x mechanical zoom, literally everything. Sadly the industry was focusing razor sharp on political infighting and was just building up crufts, and so the UI/UX was beyond atrocious - it was not simply outdated, the entire ecosystem was user hostile. That and downright illegal quota enforcement from Apple wiped it out. Two major mistakes made by Japanese phone manufacturers was that they didn't ship the phones globally from being scared to death with language barriers, and that no one cared about horrible organizational mess. They had a decade and half to make MOAP(L) work out as a usable touchscreen OS that runs on Renesas SH processor with Toshiba DRAM and paired with a Fujitsu modem, they didn't take that route and instead spent that engineering man-hours on processing PDF file returned from payment gateway on a phone, and let it all bleed out. IIUC, Korea was in an almost exact same situation. They managed to come out of it. Japan could not.
- SunlitCat 2y ago
  That's something wondering me as well. Japan had so much cool things way back in the 2000's (even late 90's I think?). Internet on mobile phones was thing (I think it was called iMode or so). Those flip phones were awesome and way more convenient then those bricks back then over here (I still have my international version of an NEC flip phone I bought in mid-ish 2000's somewhere around. It even had iMode access, albeit pretty useless here). I still wonder what could have happened, if Japanese companies pushed their phones (and technology) more worldwide. Well, we will never know.
  - treflop 2y ago
    Don’t forget that the US had Internet on mobile phones in the 90s/2000s too. It was called WAP. However it was expensive as shit. I’m glad that both WAP and i-mode failed and we got the real Internet though.
    - numpad0 2y ago
mempko 2y ago
The U.S. is about to put the hammer down on TikTok, eliminating a large foreign competitor to their social media empires. Protectionism is how countries develop local brands in the first place. Protectionism works for the U.S., it will also work in Japan (and has worked in the past).

sensanaty 2y ago

Or we can do both? Encourage competition from smaller businesses while curbing the power and influence of these behemoth monopolies that control basically all of modern human civilization. Apple, Google, Microsoft and all the rest of them should've been nuked into a trillion tiny little pieces years ago.

bamboozled 2y ago
Knowing Japan. This regulation isn’t about making your experience as consumer better.
- throwaway2037 2y ago
  Then, what is it about?
  - bamboozled 2y ago
    Pleasing or protecting some mega corp.

hamasho 2y ago

There are some sweet spots where local tech companies can compete in markets even though their products are worse. But there's nothing close to Google Search or iPhone.

ChainOfFools 2y ago
What happened to the incredibly futuristic basis in the smartphone space that Japan had with NTT docomo back in the mid-late 90's? Was it motivated purely or mainly by a need for a workable kanji/kana interface for mobile texting, with no sense of the larger implications of such a capable system as a basis for a very comfortable head start 10 years later into the smartphone adoption cycle? It feels like such a perfect textbook example of a culture that embraces "how" much more than it embraces "why," a culture that is not endemic to Japan but actually quite common at various scales globally, because most of the time its the right mindset. But when it isn't, it becomes an enormous handicap.
- hamasho 2y ago
  I'm not familiar with that era, but I think cell phones back then were more focused on hardware and brute-force style development than sophisticated software. It's unbelievable how tough it was to survive the NTT Docomo's R&D center, YRP. Depression and suicides were sadly common, which caused a lot of Japanese to avoid the IT industry for years...
- Dalewyn 2y ago
  >What happened to the incredibly futuristic basis in the smartphone space that Japan had with NTT docomo back in the mid-late 90's? Nothing, really. Remember that most advancements in computing still happened outside of Japan (Windows 95, Pentium, et al.), or in the case of NAND flash happened in Japan but was shitcanned only to be picked up by the US. Japan never was great at tech beyond a certain point, but that only became really obvious in the 2000s when even their Galapagos phones were finally outdone.
- numpad0 2y ago
  Docomo commissioned phone manufacturers to ship phones at half-year cycle. The idea was to sell it like women's clothing. But manufacturers didn't commoditize parts and optimize businesses for that cycle; instead they sped up and staggered development to match that cycle, in the process burning lots of cash and people's careers. By the time iPhone came out, the tech debts and bureaucratic overheads had grown so much that nothing could be done to save the industry and platform. Everything from devices to institutional knowledge and existing moats all went down the drain until enough was shed off that reasonably usable Android phones could be manufactured, but not much points were left in making those. > Was it motivated purely or mainly by ... I'm sure Docomo execs had sane long-term plans, but ideological and hierarchical thinking isn't Japanese forte so executions were counterproductive and/or micromanagement mess. Kanji/kana interface has nothing to do with it, all Nokia phones handled Japanese language perfectly fine, certainly more than adequately for ... a dozen model or so sold over a decade.

Dalewyn 2y ago

It's astonishing this comment is as heavily downvoted as it is because it hits Japan's problem at its core. Apple and Google are dominant because Japan simply cannot do software (and tech in general). They have no domestic players, so this conclusion is natural. Some amount of regulation might be necessary, but fundamentally Japan cannot break the US-held monopoly so long as they fail to bring their own players to market.

bamboozled 2y ago
I'm not on HN to make friends :) I do spend a lot of time in Japan though. A lot more then most down voters that's for sure. For most people visiting Japan, their first interaction will be buying a a train ticket for the NEX Airport express or the Shinkansen, it's a horrendous and confusing experience. Their interactions with Japanese software will only get worse from there however.
- qiqitori 2y ago
  Hmm, I don't get anything in this thread. What's so bad about Nintendo's or the Sony PlayStation's software? From my perspective they're like... almost perfect, except for the fact that there are updates sometimes, but they're fast. What's so bad about JR's ticket vending machines? What could be improved?
- unscaled 2y ago
  I think most of the confusing experience comes from the way that Japanese limited express paper tickets used to work. If you rode a limited express (like Shinkansen or Narita Express), you'd have to buy two tickets: the basic fare ticket and the express surcharge ticket. The basic fare ticket would also cover your non-express connections, so this was quite convenient in Japan's complex transit system. Japan still has that system in place, but the basic fare is usually replaced by your IC transit card or integrated into an eTicket (which contains both basic fare + express surcharge and is tied into your IC card). So if you buy a ticket to NEX on the Ekinet app you'll be offered a ticketless option, but you probably wouldn't know that means you still need to tap your Suica in order to pay the basic fare. Shinkansen trains are generally using eTickets, which would be even more confusing for visitors, but many visitors are using JR Pass which is completely outside the fare systems (but does need reserved seats). Most of this complexity is inherent complexity, not accidental complexity that comes from bad software. The main issues I've seen with the software in question are: Lack of English version (Ekinet), Complex registration flow (SmartEX) and flaky authentication (Ekinet). This is not a great UX, but the apps don't feel worse than train operator apps in other countries. These are not tech companies.

numpad0 2y ago

Japan had a strong flip phone ecosystem back when iPhone happened. Contactless payment, lootbox microtransactions, music downloads, GIF emojis, TV broadcast, multicore CPUs, Linux-based OS, biometrics, >326ppi displays before iPhone 4, 3x mechanical zoom, literally everything. Sadly the industry was focusing razor sharp on political infighting and was just building up crufts, and so the UI/UX was beyond atrocious - it was not simply outdated, the entire ecosystem was user hostile. That and downright illegal quota enforcement from Apple wiped it out. Two major mistakes made by Japanese phone manufacturers was that they didn't ship the phones globally from being scared to death with language barriers, and that no one cared about horrible organizational mess. They had a decade and half to make MOAP(L) work out as a usable touchscreen OS that runs on Renesas SH processor with Toshiba DRAM and paired with a Fujitsu modem, they didn't take that route and instead spent that engineering man-hours on processing PDF file returned from payment gateway on a phone, and let it all bleed out. IIUC, Korea was in an almost exact same situation. They managed to come out of it. Japan could not.

SunlitCat 2y ago
That's something wondering me as well. Japan had so much cool things way back in the 2000's (even late 90's I think?). Internet on mobile phones was thing (I think it was called iMode or so). Those flip phones were awesome and way more convenient then those bricks back then over here (I still have my international version of an NEC flip phone I bought in mid-ish 2000's somewhere around. It even had iMode access, albeit pretty useless here). I still wonder what could have happened, if Japanese companies pushed their phones (and technology) more worldwide. Well, we will never know.
- treflop 2y ago
  Don’t forget that the US had Internet on mobile phones in the 90s/2000s too. It was called WAP. However it was expensive as shit. I’m glad that both WAP and i-mode failed and we got the real Internet though.
  - numpad0 2y ago

mempko 2y ago

The U.S. is about to put the hammer down on TikTok, eliminating a large foreign competitor to their social media empires. Protectionism is how countries develop local brands in the first place. Protectionism works for the U.S., it will also work in Japan (and has worked in the past).