Nihongo dekiru? Since Amazon.com opened for business, its biggest foreign market has been Japan. The company has about 193,000 customers here and they ring up about $34 million worth of sales. Mind you, the domestic Japanese market for online book sales is only $46 million. (In the name of full disclosure, I'm one of those 193,000; I'm not, however, a stockholder.)
It's not hard to figure out the key to Amazon's success: Even when you add the cost of shipping purchases halfway around the world, buying books from the U.S. still costs less than buying them here. A lot less. (That isn't unique or new: Photography buffs are well acquainted with the "42nd Street Camera" phenomenon, in which a camera costs less in NYC than in the country where it was made.)
Eager to stick more fingers deeper into that pie, Amazon last week opened its Japanese Web site (and reportedly had 400 sales that first night). Developing a Japanese-language site makes a lot of sense, given the rapid expansion of the local e-commerce market. Half of Japanese Net users have said they want to buy a book or magazine online.