iTunes 5 Localization Gaffe: Infrastructure vs Technology
I just read Michael Panda’s rant article How Apple iTunes 5.0 Almost Ruined My Life and can totally relate where he is coming from, having put in six years in Japan myself. This seems like a classic business infrastructure vs technology problem that is at the heart of issues surrounding international distribution. At the heart of this is that good development can solve problems but they cannot resolve territorial issues.
Anyone who very much enjoys foreign films runs into region codes. Region codes are a technology limitation to keep you from buying DVDs outside of your region. This makes it easier to conform with local laws and, also, to price the product based on regional pricing requirements. For example, its hard enough to get consumers to pay for IP in China and Russia; at the US rate, since a US-retail price of a DVD is about 10% of someone’s monthly salary in those countries. Many software vendors have completely ignored this, consequently, its unthinkable to actually try to pay for software in many countries unless there is some other compeling reason to do so. Some reasons may include:
Now to pick out two items from Michael’s rant of especial interest to software vendors:
He wants to buy from the US store because its cheaper. A very sensitive issue for Apple since its been slapped around in Europe because of descrepancies in pricing between the GBP and the Euro. However Apple may be constrained in two ways: 1) pricing is a result of negotiations with Japanese record labels that may require Apple to charge a certain rate, by contract; 2) pricing is set by region based on Apple’s determination that buyers in Japan will pay more, therefore they should be charged more. They charge more because they can. There are vendors who sell software which is roughly equivalent (or the exact same title) on Windows as MacOS, but the Mac version is more expensive because many Mac vendors know they can get away with it.
He wants the interface to be in English as he specified in the installer routines because that is what he is comfortable with. Im totally there, as should the entire population of Spanish speakers who are residents of the United States. Now the ex-pat community is a very, very small minority in Japan, but also a very loud one. Vendors often ignore them based on numbers, but little do they seem to know that the Japanese technology industry has a very high population of ex-pats who make buying recommendations and decisions.
Also, by making a single install of iTunes and touting it as a true international standard, Apple is also in a position whereby they are encouraged to remove flexible capabilities based on the overall “touch cost” of providing them. There is an engineering cost associated with making an English client run well on a Japanese OS, but connect to a regional (USA) online store. Will Apple make more or less by this strategy? The single install is popular with some Mac users but its bedeviling as well. By making a single installer mandatory, it can also require the engineers that work on the software to make feature cuts or weird code patches in order to ship on time. For example, one such gaffe was with a 3D product that performed differently on Mac OS X 10.1 based on it it was a native Japanese install or an English install that was switched to Japanese. Mac users believe that they are exactly the same, but practice shows they are not — indicating a weird code patch to support this single install position of Apple’s.
Michael, Im in complete agreement with you, and given that Apple is strongly moving towards complete control over every aspect of its product design, development, marketing and customer relations, they should have done a far better job on this, even with any potential business issues with Japanese record labels.