Apple Looks to 2021 With Japanese New Year Ad Highlighting the App Store

Sunday December 27, 2020 6:14 pm PST by Joe Rossignol

Apple today shared a new App Store ad on its YouTube channel in Japan ahead of the New Year. The brief 15-second video highlights various apps available on the App Store for productivity, connecting with others, and gaming.

Watch on YouTube

The ad emphasizes how the App Store can help people get off to a good start in 2021, complete with colorful animations. New Year or "Shōgatsu" is widely considered the most important holiday in Japan, observed on January 1-3.

Apple also typically holds a one-day New Year's shopping event in Japan in early January, offering Apple Store gift cards with the purchase of select Apple products, but it has yet to announce an event of this kind for 2021. This year, the event took place on January 2 at Apple Stores in Japan and through the Apple Store app.

Update: Apple has announced that the shopping event will be held January 2-3.

Tags: App Store, Apple Ads

Popular Stories

Apple Pulls Keynote, Pages and Numbers From App Store [Update: Back]

Thursday October 22, 2026 11:01 am PDT by Juli Clover

Apple has temporarily removed Keynote, Pages, and Numbers from the App Store, just after releasing an update that added iPhone Duo support and a new Intelligent Assistant. It is not clear if the apps were removed intentionally, or if it is a bug. Apple has not said when the apps will be reinstated, but if it was in error, they should return soon. Update: The Mac versions are back without...

• 72 comments

Apple Reveals More Than 50 Apps That Will Be Updated for iPhone Duo

Thursday October 22, 2026 6:04 am PDT by Joe Rossignol

Apple today highlighted more than 50 third-party App Store apps that are or will soon be fully optimized for the iPhone Duo and its various layouts and poses. You can hold the iPhone Duo and set it down in a number of ways, such as partially folded like a book, placed down on a surface, or standing on its edges: With the Netflix app, for example, Apple said iPhone Duo users can scroll...

• 151 comments

Apple Says Over 100000 Apps Optimized for iPhone Duo But These Are Still Missing Feature 1

Apple Says More Than 100,000 Apps Optimized for iPhone Duo, Here's What's Still Missing

Friday November 6, 2026 9:18 am PST by Joe Rossignol

Apple today announced that more than 100,000 apps have been optimized for the iPhone Duo, released two weeks ago. We confirmed that this figure refers to apps built with the iOS 27.1 SDK or later, meaning these apps fill the full width of the iPhone Duo's inner and outer displays and have vertical controls in the status bar. A statement from Susan Prescott, Apple's Vice President of...

• 108 comments

Top Rated Comments

farewelwilliams

77 months ago

japan is great and their culture is amazing in many ways. highly recommend people traveling to Japan after covid is over.

Score: 9 Votes (Like | Disagree)

patent10021

77 months ago

I live down the street from the Kyoto Apple Store. The end of this year can't come any sooner. One bonus of Covid is there are no tourists so there are amazing pictures to be had everywhere.

Score: 5 Votes (Like | Disagree)

MacLC

77 months ago

Another noisy ad. Doesn’t matter what language it’s in, the ad’s soundtrack must be jarring to your ears. If it’s not, it’s probably a fake ad or a parody.

Nope, clicking the link it's from Apple Japan, so it's real 😢
It's the typical "dasai" hiphop that we've had to put up with over the past 15 years.

We have so much good pop music here, but Japanese marketers insert hiphop because it combines an "exotically foreign" beat with "safely understandable Japanese" lyrics.

There's nothing more astroturf than upperclass Japanese youth running around flashing bizarre hand gestures, saying, "yo, saggu raifu, yo" ("yo, thug life, yo") trying so hard to be repressed minorities despite being part of the affluent 99% majority.

As for what most Japanese listen to, it's something more along the lines of this, which is one of the songs to be performed at the Tokyo Olympics.

Score: 3 Votes (Like | Disagree)

madrigal77

77 months ago

japan is great and their culture is amazing in many ways. highly recommend people traveling to Japan after covid is over.

I normally go for New Year, but obviously didn’t this year. And I just saw there was a Covid exposure on the flight we normally take from Vancouver to Tokyo. I don’t know why all international passenger flights haven’t been shut down.

Score: 2 Votes (Like | Disagree)