To explain, for example, why Toyota has trouble with software in their cars and why an iPhone will outcompete any advanced Japanese phone.
What about making japanese apps? There's got to be some decent potential there for the service economy.
What about making japanese apps? There's got to be some decent potential there for the service economy.
So many and so prominent, in fact, that it took me 5 minutes to convince the tax office that I was not doing iPhone development. "No ma'am, I write web applications." "So iPhone stuff, right?" "No ma'am, web applications. They run over the Internet." "Like iPhone stuff, right?" "Similar in some ways, ma'am, except almost all of my customers use PCs rather than their cell phones to access the software." "... and people pay money for that?" "Yes ma'am, it is not uncommon to pay money for software (+), even before the App Store existed." "Wow... foreign countries are so strange."
(+) Japan does not have as prominent of a B2C software market as the US does, aside from video games and the aforementioned mobile applications. The largest electronics store in this town stocks less than 20 PC titles -- i.e. about a fourth as many as a WalMart, not counting their bargain bin.
Relying too much on gaming and anime isn't sustainable. Japanese have good technical skills, but they don't survive for the next 50 years without strong international, multi-lingual marketing and sales skills.
The economy of lucky Japanese App Store millionaires will end soon. If the world doesn't come to Japan, Japan goes to the world.