When it has something to do with Apple.

The New York Times has a blog piece on the iPad’s arrival in Japan, and the stir it’s allegedly causing. They use this as a peg for a larger analysis about the Japanese feeling like they’ve lost their competitive edge, not only to Apple, but to South Korea’s Samsung, Taiwan’s Acer, etc.

Along the way, they drop an eyebrow raising stat:

“Shipments of the iPhone more than doubled, to 1.69 million units, in the year ended in March, giving Apple a 72 percent share of the country’s smartphone market, according to the MM Research Institute.”

Eyebrow raising enough that I went looking at it. There are a few problems.

The most obvious: Note the 72% figure is of “smartphone” sales. The thing is, smartphones don’t sell well in Japan (or anywhere else). The iPhone’s actual market share in Japan among all cell phones is 4.9%, according to the very same report from MM Research Institute Ltd. quoted for the 72% figure.

Now, mind you, that is slightly better than the iPhone’s global market share among cell phones — which is 3 percent in Q1 2010. (Smartphones sold 54.7 mil units; they’re 18.8% of global sales; that yields global sales among total devices of 290.96 mil units; of which Apple sold 8.8 mil.)

Around the world, 97% of the market looks at the iPhone — and buys something else. In Japan, “only” 95% of all customers buy something else, but it still ain’t great.

The iPhone has a smaller market share than Linux. And Steve Jobs has yet to trade in his “reality distortion field” for a “reality clarification field.”

Perkins 1988 Dukakis rally
Originally uploaded by halobrien

I very much want to find the negative for this in whatever box it’s in in the basement… But this is the best scan I have at this time, near as I can tell, and relatively few people have seen it.

Tony Perkins at Michael Dukakis’ campaign rally, UCLA’s Pauley Pavilion, Mon, 7 Nov 1988 (the night before the election). Cue the screeching violins from Psycho.

Executive summary: If American business is so smart, why is Dilbert so popular?

There’s a well-known phenomenon in politics: People dislike Congress as an institution, but generally like their local Congresscritter. (I suspect this also happened to the LibDems’ detriment in the recent UK elections: Parliament are bastards, but “my” MP is all right, Jack.) I suspect this is an example of experience vs theory. Congress is abstract and distant, and won’t complain back. Local guys (of either gender) may well be known to you, and it’s much tougher to dislike them without a concrete reason.

So, here’s the curious thing: The like/dislike relationship completely reverses (in general) when it comes to business, or laissez-faire, or entrepreneurship, or whatever you choose to call it. That is, many people grouse about the stupidity of middle-management (and higher) at the companies they work for, but small-l libertarians still praise The Genius of the Market. I suspect this is an example of experience vs theory as well. Sure, the local guys (of either gender) may be total incompetents, but the story of the possibility of success due to hard work and merit (let alone the Lottery of Luck aspect) is so appealing it trumps people’s experience with the real thing.

Thus the realists in the office put Dilbert in their cubicles and watch The Office at home, even as middle management is enraptured by tomes of survivorship bias like Good to Great, The Millionaire Next Door, etc.