English-specific keyboards available only in Japan: what's the point?

[elmwood]

First off, I'll admit to being something of a keyboard geek, although I didn't realize it until now.  I guess my stash of Ms and M Space Savers (just in case ...), along with a TG3 BL82 (a lucky find on eBay years before production began on the Deck; it's an internally illuminated keyboard for police cars) and an offbeat NeXT ADB keyboard (not my image) gives me away.

Anyhow, I keep reading about these fantastic keyboards like the Filco and Topre, and wonder ... why are the Roman alphabet-only English versions of the keyboards available only in Japan?  I mean, what's the point?  It would be as if Unicomp made Cyrillic keyboards, but didn't ship to Russia and had no retail channels there.  Is there that great of a market for English-only keyboards in Japan? Wouldn't the market for such keyboards be larger in ... oh, the United States or the UK?

[Therac-25]

Anyhow, I keep reading about these fantastic keyboards like the Filco and Topre, and wonder ... why are the Roman alphabet-only English versions of the keyboards available only in Japan?  I mean, what's the point?  It would be as if Unicomp made Cyrillic keyboards, but didn't ship to Russia and had no retail channels there.  Is there that great of a market for English-only keyboards in Japan? Wouldn't the market for such keyboards be larger in ... oh, the United States or the UK?

The giveaway is in what roman letters are used to refer to them on alot of the product pages -- ASCII.  PCs, like it or not, are historically bound up with US English.  It's realistic to assume that there are enough uses that still assume a standard US key layout to make it worth selling those in Japan.

Another possibility -- and I can't confirm this -- but it might also be easier to go from a US layout to other languages.  Mappings for a standard US keyboard will exist for every language on the planet.  It might be a less well-defined operation to map arbitrary languages to the Japanese key layout.

[itlnstln]

It could be that the cost of distribution and marketing here in the US is very expensive, and they are waiting for a cult following (kinda like us) to spread the news grassroots-style.  Once public awareness grows and distribution is viable, they may make them available to the US.

[Therac-25]

It could be that the cost of distribution and marketing here in the US is very expensive, and they are waiting for a cult following (kinda like us) to spread the news grassroots-style.  Once public awareness grows and distribution is viable, they will probably make them available to the US.

I doubt it.  They aren't going to make something right now that isn't selling right now.  I can only assume that Diatec is selling US English keyboards in Japan because people are buying them there.  

Don't forget that Costar (the company that makes the Filco keyboards) manufactures keyboards for other companies as well, so it's not like it's something that would cost anymore than making a Japanese ones.

[D-EJ915]

A lot of people like the US layout, the Japanese one is extremely quirky so I can see many Japanese people using the US layout as their preferred.  Some laptops sold in Japan actually only have US keyboards.

[Repoman]

Alongside having to work with Hiragana, Katakana and all of those Kanji, the Japanese also use Romaji regularly. I don't know if you can program in the first three or not, but I suspect the Japanese (and Asia-wide) use of ASCII is just a reflection of practicality.