Apple is the exception here. What's missing for all other phones not targeted to the Japanese market are the agreements between any non-Apple device manufacturer and the Japanese IC card issuers (JR East for Suica etc.)

Since these cards actually "store money offline", the symmetric keys involved are really not something the issuers ever want to see leaked, so I assume it's not only a question of money (i.e. licensing fees), but also trust in the security posture of the secure element of the phone (if it even has one; many Android phones don't).

Author here, this is my fault for not proof reading this part properly! The part about non-Japan SKUs is generally true for Android phone manufacturers, but Apple eats the cost and gives all phones Osaifi-Keitai. You do not need to root an iPhone to get this functionality, even on a non-Japan unit.

I will write a correction for this section to clear up the confusion.

AFAI, many Android phones have Osaifu-Kaitai support outside of the US just sitting there. I think if there is a key generation fee, it's at setup time of a wallet and not just physical phone's existence.

I rooted my US model Pixel 9 Pro on my Japan trip last year to enable it. :D Literally a boolean in a config file.

https://github.com/kormax/osaifu-keitai-google-pixel

(The author's write up has more theories on why Google blocks it on non-Japan SKUs)

This is an interesting find and the author's ideas make sense to me. I can't confirm them of course, this is all probably hidden behind legal documents, but I've updated the article to a link with this repo. Thanks for the link!

Author of the "Osaifu-Keitai-Google-Pixel" article here.

There's a big chance that Apple does not eat the cost for Osaifu-Keitai actually, as they may have a sweet-heart deal, hinted by an article from watch.impress [1], which I found a very long time ago via Twitter.

So the fee is either waived by FeliCa networks, covered by Japanese Carriers, and (as an educated guess) paid only upon enrollment of the first FeliCa-compatible card to device.

I think it would be naive to believe that Apple, of all companies, would be the one willing to pay a couple of cents per device in order to offer a feature that, at best, only a single digit percentage of their users would use.

[1] https://www.watch.impress.co.jp/docs/series/suzukij/1297656....

Also my western Google pixel pro 9XL does not support it..while the Japanese version does. I guess google might be saving on the licensing or something.

If you want to root your Pixel to enable it:

https://github.com/kormax/osaifu-keitai-google-pixel

iPhones yes, Android no. Most Android devices sold outside of Japan can’t use FeliCa so you have to get the Japan model for osaifu-keitai stuff

It's iPhone 8 and SE 2 onwards. iPhone 7 was the first but they had to be the Japanese special. Non-Japanese 7(at least the early batches of) and SE 1 don't support Suica payments.