Apple resists pressure from Japan

The Wall Street Journal reports.

“We haven't given up our hope of introducing the iPhone", but Apple typically asks carriers to commit a large volume, Ryuji Yamada, president and CEO of Japan's biggest mobile operator by subscribers, told Dow Jones Newswires in an interview on Tuesday.

Most cellular phone companies have their own content distribution, e-mail clients, and special services that they charge extra for when they get new customers via preinstalled applications on most of their phones. This had been the model for years until Apple released the iPhone, CNET says.

Without a single branding element from any other company on the device itself, and only a tiny indicator of what service you're using in iOS, Apple has always tightly controlled its product's look - especially with iDevices. Yamada (as have many other carrier CEOs in the past) is attempting to stonewall Apple until he gets his software on the iPhone.

According to GigaOM, another reason cited by Yamada for not picking up the iPhone is Apple's extraordinary upfront commitment requirement. The volume of device orders Apple insists on means carriers have to promote the iPhone heavily, which could result in a huge percentage of its subscribers on Apple devices. That, in turn, leads to less control of the customer relationship through measures like the aforementioned branded bloatware.