iPhone 3G sales lag in Japan

The iPhone 3G may be ubiquitous, but there's once place it's not faring so well: the Land of the Rising Sun.

Apple partnered with Japan's third-largest mobile carrier, Softbank Corp., to bring the iPhone 3G to Japan, and though the initial buzz over the summer generated large sales, demand has fallen to a third of what it was in the market initially, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal. Spokesmen for Apple Japan and Softbank declined to provide details on the reasons behind the drop in demand, but one possibility is that Japan is already home to some of the world's most cutting-edge technology, especially in the Mobile Internet Device market, and the new iPhone may simply be just another piece of new technology among many others, and not the life-altering device the U.S. market has deemed it.

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