Ah, quite a mixture of brain burp the three articles
Sony, Panasonic and Toshiba alone make 260 billion USD in revenue. Just like the South Koreans, the Sony or Panasonic or Samsung TV we see is just a small fraction of their business. The iProducts wouldn't exist without these companies.
The core though is true, the Japanese at international level are failing to consumerize their intelligence. A bit like the dutch Philips, a lot of great innovation but the only Philips product you want to buy are the electric razors.
But the article series also falls to the english world trap. The moment you leave the english speaking world, or just the US in some cases, devices like Amazon Kindle disappear. Same applies for the services, instead of Netflix there's something local, typically bundled with the local broadband offerings. iTunes and iPod are yesterday compared to services like Spotify.
The trap works other direction, too. If you make a great product or service that the japanese, chinese or some other big-enough local market loves, the product may not be that exportable to the english speaking market.
But true, Apple _AND_ Samsung have been the winners over the last years.