"I'm also in Japan and I completely disagree with Carlos on his comment on the iMac situation in Japan.

First, I'll give you some hard evidence that the success of the iMac is nothing short of phenomenal. If you take a look at the Yahoo Japan ranking at http://news.yahoo.co.jp/ranking/bcn/cpt/desk_w.html, you'll see that the iMacs are taking the top 6 spots in desktop sales for last week. The top is the revision B Bondi Blue, and the following 5 are each of the Candy iMac colors. In 7th place comes the PowerMac G3.

My observation is that the Japanese (even the men) have a very sweet spot for things that are cute and stylish. I hope that the P1 portable which is destined to be an even bigger smash in Japan is going to come in different colors too.

As for Japanese retailers, it is true that they could be doing better. Still, there are several "Store-within-a-store" type shops, and there are still even Mac dedicated shops. Most shops also sell Macs. Maybe things change when you get further from Tokyo, but it's not that bad. It could of course be much better, and it was a few years before. The iMac could reverse things.

My conclusion is, maybe Carlos is talking for the rural parts of Japan; he definitly is not correct about Tokyo. I want people in the rest of the world to know that.
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Naofumi Kagami â¡ÅXî¸Å@íºéj
Staff Scientist, Biotechnology
Tokyo Research Laboratories,
Kyowa Hakko Kogyo Co., Ltd., Tokyo, JAPAN
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