Want to moan about IE7 AU for Japan

[Rubber Duck]

This might be a good place to start:

http://forums.microsoft.com/MSDN-JA/default.aspx?ForumGroupID=40&SiteID=7

The lack of IE7 is holding back Internet Development in Japan, and hence their economy. And don't think that the Americans aren't aware of this. Few things happen entirely by accident!

[idnowner]

Nevermind.

[Rubber Duck]

Looks like one or two are getting stuck in down at the IE blog thread:

http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2006/11/02/first-wave-of-localized-ie7-releases-now-available.aspx

[touchring]

One year on. Any progress on this? :o

[Rubber Duck]

No, it really looks as though the Japanese are not right interested despite comments made at TRAFFICS. Still no contribution at ICANN Wiki even from the members here.

[Olney]

More than IDN extensions locally here JPRS is doing a great job at getting these large companies to offer IDNs to consumers. It might seem crazy but I think JPRS is not making a big deal about the extensions unless they know solid definites. They've already gone through years waiting for browser compatibility & the IDN extensions are a plus but not necessary(for here).

[touchring]

No, it really looks as though the Japanese are not right interested despite comments made at TRAFFICS. Still no contribution at ICANN Wiki even from the members here.


I don't believe that the japanese are not interested, just that they will talk among themselves.

[Olney]

I don't believe that the japanese are not interested, just that they will talk among themselves.

I got a sneaky suspicious Chinese might be the same...

[touchring]

I got a sneaky suspicious Chinese might be the same...


I'm sure they are due to poor english capability, but still doesn;'t stop some virtually english illiterate ones from using online translators to post and making a fool out of themselves - you can see they don't have a clue from what they paste. The education system, and standard of written english in japan is still many times better than in china.

Back to the story, when can we anticipate AU in Japan?

[Drewbert]

Let's just wait and see what ICANN LA brings us.

[touchring]

Let's just wait and see what ICANN LA brings us.



Can ICANN influence what M$ does? I think Microsoft is holding back on AU in Japan since Firefox is still quite weak.

If there's no AU, we might still find ourselves at about the same position come Nov 2008, Nov 2009, and maybe even Nov 2010.

[Olney]

Even without Auto Updates you have to realize there's people getting new computers etc & Vista is installed on all of them. The business web compatibility aspect is most likely to hold things up.
You have Yahoo promoting their version of IE7 which is generally used daily by everyone.

[touchring]

Even without Auto Updates you have to realize there's people getting new computers etc & Vista is installed on all of them. The business web compatibility aspect is most likely to hold things up.
You have Yahoo promoting their version of IE7 which is generally used daily by everyone.


Have you make a check on the progress of how IE7 adoption for your Japanese names?

I just checked my Analytics, IE7 is still very low for JP, doesn't show an obvious improvement - but analytics might have a bug then.

[Rubber Duck]

Japanese Corporates mainly banks are still addicted to Active-X controls. MS gave them a stay of execution until 2008, but then started AU unexpectedly. They went ballastic and made MS revert to original schedule. MS know that the Grim Reaper is coming, but are stuck between a rock and a hard place.

Bottom line is that they can probably use their bandwidth more effectively elsewhere for a month or two. Firefox is a serious threat in Russia, India and possibly also China. The fact that Firefox is going to release on to Symbian is also a major headache for MS. They have no Auto Update option for mobile phone.

There is going to be a seismic shift in the way we control our technology and access the web. Microsoft only stands to lose. It is just a question of how badly and to whom they are going to lose out. They face a pack of Wolves which include, Google, Mozilla and Apple, but there also a lot of other emerging threats as well.