XYplorer Beta Club

I recently did some XY sales stats (all stats from before MLS) and Japan is totally different from all other comparable countries (big, rich, technophile). For example, the sales-per-population ratio for Australia is one hundred (!) times higher than for Japan, and for USA it's still 80 times higher, or to take a non-English speaking country: Germany is 30 times better than Japan, and France 25 times better. These are significant differences.

WHY?

Maybe they have something better


Sorry - just kidding. Couldn't resist

Try including some other variables into your analysis. Poverty rates, computer ownership, others?

One of the biggest likely issue is that there are not as many computer users in Japan. They have a lot of computers but the amount that use it on a daily basis is actually not a lot. They pretty much end up using their phones more to do everything that they need just somewhat like how here in the U.S., people are starting to use tablets and such more. They still buy computers but just isn't used as much so they have less need for certain types of softwares.

Enternal wrote:One of the biggest likely issue is that there are not as many computer users in Japan. They have a lot of computers but the amount that use it on a daily basis is actually not a lot. They pretty much end up using their phones more to do everything that they need just somewhat like how here in the U.S., people are starting to use tablets and such more. They still buy computers but just isn't used as much so they have less need for certain types of softwares.

That would be an explanation if users would mainly do things with XY that you could also do with a phone. Or if people (geeks?, nerds?) would rather buy it as a cool techno toy instead of as a work tool. There have to be Japanese who actually work with computers. There have to be files in Japan. So they need a file manager. What do they use, Explorer? Is that the explanation of the Japanese crisis?

Fairly sure that Japan's computer literacy rate is right up there with all the other 1st world countries.
I think it's mainly to do with Xyplorer being foreign software. It's like the Chinese have their own separate version of Facebook, Skype, etc...

I think it's hard for foreign software to penetrate those markets because they're mostly turned inward on themselves.

The ability to handle Unicode filenames is fairly new. Is the UI and instructions translated? Does it handle IME's cleanly? If so, you might need exposure in Japanese blogs and reviewers.

My wife's family back in China don't use my video conferencing product because it doesn't have Chinese instructions and UI, for example. Like another poster said, they have “their own” preferred products in that market.

You need a "killer feature" that addresses some issue they might have with filenames and media. Like, perhaps, transcoding filenames that were saved on a different code page (if that's still an issue anymore), sorting numeric strings with national digit characters, renaming between halfwidth/fullwidth forms or between Katakana/Hiragana.

40k wrote:Fairly sure that Japan's computer literacy rate is right up there with all the other 1st world countries.
I think it's mainly to do with Xyplorer being foreign software. It's like the Chinese have their own separate version of Facebook, Skype, etc...

I think it's hard for foreign software to penetrate those markets because they're mostly turned inward on themselves.

That would mean they would use a special japanese file manager other than Explorer? Is there any evidence for this? (As far as I know there is no japanese operating system -- they have the common Windows/Mac/Linux mix.)

JDługosz wrote:The ability to handle Unicode filenames is fairly new. Is the UI and instructions translated? Does it handle IME's cleanly? If so, you might need exposure in Japanese blogs and reviewers.

My wife's family back in China don't use my video conferencing product because it doesn't have Chinese instructions and UI, for example. Like another poster said, they have “their own” preferred products in that market.

You need a "killer feature" that addresses some issue they might have with filenames and media. Like, perhaps, transcoding filenames that were saved on a different code page (if that's still an issue anymore), sorting numeric strings with national digit characters, renaming between halfwidth/fullwidth forms or between Katakana/Hiragana.

1) No, XY handles Unicode filenames for 8 years now.
2) I could add Romanji <-> Katakana/Hiragana ... but would that be a killer feature? I doubt it. Romanji <-> Kanji, now THAT would be killer.

There are some years now (it was before the Fukushima event), since I had the opportunity to hear some stories about a top manager's experiences from Japan. In short, as far as I understood it correctly: The cultural differences between Europe/Japan are enormous, in a sense of much stronger hierarchical feelings and structures there, an unease of bringing up suggestions to the levels above, as well as a very difficult final executive decision making process (due to the unease of exposing oneself and taking care of relations to others).

I would call that a "they-are-surely-caring-about-me-and-making-the-best-decisons"-mentality. In this sense, I would expect the following attitude regarding the (most probably completely unknown) XYplorer:

All people around me are using the application ABCDE for this. There have to be deep reasons for that. The ABCDE is surely the best to be used. It is so natural that I am using it too. Why should I look around, when this is already the proven best choice.

I think that this might be the reason why here is still no Japanese volunteer translator to be seen.

But they weren't using stone age tools in Japan anymore when I last looked. In many areas, especially technology, Japan is ultra-advanced and pretty much leading the rest of the world. And the question remains: Which file manager do they use? (Hey, some Japanese must be reading this! Help!)

admin wrote:

Enternal wrote:They pretty much end up using their phones more to do everything that they need just somewhat like how here in the U.S., people are starting to use tablets and such more.

That would be an explanation if users would mainly do things with XY that you could also do with a phone. Or if people (geeks?, nerds?) would rather buy it as a cool techno toy instead of as a work tool.

I wonder then if part of the answer is XY's lack of support for non-drive devices. If they rely heavily on mobile devices which cannot be managed easily through XY maybe it prevents it from getting much consideration?


Note: I'm being serious here, and though it might read otherwise, I'm not using this as an opportunity to plead for a feature. Personally, I've never found this missing feature to be much of a bother.

A small part if any. There must be people in Japan that work with normal boring vanilla files. A quick check revealed: TC and X2 are available in Japanese. Is that the solution? The other two are dominating Nippon already? Hmmm...

To me, a Japanese, the reasons are obvious:

1. Language. Since Japan's population and economy are huge, you can get anything you want without speaking a word in English. So even when an online software is useful to them too, people are just not going to find it.
2. Payment. Japanese tend to hate to use credit cards. They rely on cash and bank accounts for daily shopping and miscellaneous payments, and still go to rental stores and rent DVDs to watch movies at home!
3. Domestic software. Since the eras of MS-DOS and Windows 3.1, file management has been one of the genres that domestic software dominate. In Japan, almost every genre of software, from browsers to archivers to text editors to tiny utilities for enhancing mouse operations, has a number-one domestic software. Most of them are freeware and developed by individuals as a byproduct of their hobby and/or research. File managers currently popular in Japan include MDIE, X-Finder and As/R.

Isolated physically and historically, Japan has developed some weird culture and customs, including so much stuff I can't be very proud of.

Ah, thanks for the info! I think now, with XYplorer in Japanese, we will break some of those weird customs.