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Originally Posted by Sil_liS
According to the article in the OP it is designed for students. It will get a field trial at 3 Japanese universities before it goes on the market. Are devices more expensive in Japan?
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As a general rule yes, this was mainly due to the expensive yen, in order to hold market shares overseas many manufacturers had Japanese consumers subsidize their exports. However, two factors are in play today, one the yen is coming down, it is now trading around 100 yen to the dollar and I wouldn't be surprised to see it around 120 yen within six months, second they now face massive competition from Korea and China and are slowly realizing that they can not stick to outdated pricing models.
So prices between Japan and their overseas markets are much more in parity than they used to. One caveat though is devices limited to the domestic market. One good example are smartphones. There are lot of smartphones that are not sold outside Japan and they are exorbitantly expensive, but they are sold on plans and the monthly cost is acceptable to the Japanese consumer. Who knows, maybe Sony will release it with a SIM card so you can access Wikipedia.