- absolutely. I remember seeing a program about Sony and they used the example that people in India like their electronics to be heavy and big, so they put a giant magnet inside all their hifis in order to sell them. There is a very real difference in ‘sense’ or ‘taste’ between different audiences, some countries seem to like it all colorful and sugary.

Ownership of iPhones wasn’t a selection criterion for the focus group, but some of them must have owned them given the demographic numbers in the report.

In the USA, mobile web browsing was pretty much not worth the trouble up until the iPhone, and now that the iPhone exists, it is the overwhelming favorite. The Pre uses the same web rendering engine and display size; Android also uses the same rendering engine (and many Android phones use the same display size). So it’s fair to say that in the USA, the iPhone has pretty much defined mobile browsing, directly or indirectly. Part of this has made it possible for normal web pages to look good, but it has also prompted a lot of mobile-optimized websites that are designed to look more or less like an iPhone app. IE, drab.

In Japan, of course, the iPhone is Johnny-come-lately to the mobile web, which for a long time pretty much meant i-mode. The iPhone has become pretty popular there since its launch, but it hasn’t defined mobile browsing.

So clearly, some people like the iPhone in Japan. Perhaps despite the “drab” aesthetics, perhaps because of it. Which leads me to wonder: the people in this focus group, were they already iPhone users?