How Steve Jobs ‘out-Japanned’ Japan
The better part of a month has gone by, and most pundits have already weighed in on this year's CES — the global gadget extravaganza that makes Las Vegas the gravitational center of the geek universe every January. The consensus? Meh.
Context & Ripple Effects
The Chronicle's column lands at the end of a long arc in which Japanese consumers first snubbed Apple: Business Week asked in 2007 whether Japan even needed the iPhone, and by 2009 Japanese buyers still weren't taking it despite fan outrage over a Wired piece saying so. The turn came with the iPad frenzy of May 2010, which the Wall Street Journal read as a sea change — Japanese buyers embracing a device built on design and ecosystem rather than the spec-sheet arms race their home industry ran.
The piece also runs eight days after Jobs confirmed his third indefinite medical leave and handed day-to-day leadership to Tim Cook, so its 'out-Japanned' framing doubles as a verdict written while the authorship question hangs over Apple. And it publishes into a rare opening: pundits' consensus on CES 2011 was a collective 'meh', meaning the January stage that Japanese handset makers traditionally owned went quiet just as Apple's design-led playbook was being declared the winner.
First-order effects
- Apple enters a post-CES news cycle holding the narrative: with Las Vegas rated 'meh', attention defaults to Apple's own event calendar, now steered by Tim Cook during Jobs's third leave.
- Japanese device makers showing dual-core, 4G and tablet wares in Las Vegas face the awkward optics of a strong show landing in a show pundits dismissed, right after Apple captured their home market's enthusiasm.
Second-order effects
- Rivals are pushed to compete on design and desirability rather than specifications — the exact ground where, per the Chronicle's framing, Jobs beat Japan at its own game — raising the cost of the traditional spec-sheet strategy for Sony, Sharp and peers.
- If the CES 'meh' recurs, exhibitors' marketing spend and launch timing drift away from the Vegas stage toward company-owned keynotes, weakening the trade show's pricing and announcement leverage.
Third-order effects
- Consumer electronics consolidates around fashionized computing — devices judged as lifestyle objects within an ecosystem — a structural shift from the Japanese model of annual specification leadership that defined the industry through the last two decades.
- The authority of centralized industry stages erodes as single companies command enough pull to set the product conversation themselves; who inherits Jobs's stagecraft at Apple becomes an industry-level variable.
The trend: Computing is shifting from Japan's specification-driven hardware race toward design-led, ecosystem-bound products, with Apple's keynote calendar displacing CES as the moment that sets the year's agenda.