iPhone nabs 46 percent of Japanese smartphone market, the tiny Japanese smartphone market
By Donald Melanson 
posted December 18th 2009 12:36PM
posted December 18th 2009 12:36PM
So you read a headline like "iPhone grabs 46 percent of the Japanese smartphone market" and the first thing you're likely to think is, "wow, Apple is really doing well for itself." Well, it is and it isn't. While it has made some considerable gains in the smartphone market at the expense of phones like Sharp's W-ZERO3 and the Willcom 03, it still hasn't gained nearly the same total mindshare or market share that it has over here. That's because "smartphones" as we know them are still a relatively small market in Japan, where carriers' lineups consist of a whole range of offerings including everything from mobile TV-equipped phones to true camera phones to perfume holders. For a bit more context, check out the pie chart after the break courtesy of IDC Japan, which shows cellphone vendors' market share in Japan as of October of this year. The leaders by a wide margin are Sharp, Panasonic, Fujitsu and NEC with a combined 72.8% of the market, while Apple is lumped in with "Others," which add up to 22.6%. It's making inroads, to be sure, but just that at the moment.
@iDavey I agree with what you say about the small smart phone market in Japan.
Smart phones in Japan suffer from an acute case of the Verizon syndrome where carriers dictate features and manufacturers obey. The formula worked to an extend, however the smart phone scene in Japan, while advanced for nearly the last 2 decades is now showing its age. They're now too overly complex and not user-friendly, static feature phones.
If the iPhone adoption in Japan is a sign, then the phone market there appears due for a major shift as consumers begin to pay attention to foreign smart handsets driven by American operating systems (iPhone OS, Web OS, Android) as they introduce advanced and customizable features primarily driven by software in the form of apps.
If that were to happen then local models could suffer rapid abandonment rates and be forced to adapt to a similar format to what 3rd party makers are doing with Android in other parts of the world.
But of course, there are still niche needs particular of the Japanese market. The iPhone already has an advantage there as there is a third party market for iPhone hardware accessories that supplement its software feature-rich environment. For example, the demand for TV tuners is supplied by Softbank itself:
http://www.intomobile.com/2009/01/03/softbanks-one-seg-iphone-tv-tuner-handled.html
@HighestRanked
In the context of the Japanese mobile market, I think you are a blithering troll. You don't even know what you are talking about.
Good poke at Gizmodo ;)
I wonder how many ways the Jap users have hacked the iPhone. Those guys are capable of anything!
@(Unverified)
The iPhone is here to stay just like computers will never need more than 640k of RAM and we don't need a patent office because everything that could be invent has been haha.
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Bill_Gates
http://www.quotationspage.com/quote/22779.html
I expected the iPhone to do very well. What I'm more shocked about is the #3 phone on this chart. The Advanced Zero3 (which was #1 in 2007 and 2008) runs Windows Mobile. ...Amazing.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zq2h3WAd4oY
PS: What's with hiding the submit button for comments on IE? I hate the new Engadget. It looks like Microsoft made it. First I thought it was just IE you were picking on, so I loaded FireGerbil. ...Same drama with the burning rodent, script lockups. ...WHY! The old site was nice.
@8r13n
But if you look at the graph, that phone is tanking in 2009.... In fact, WinMo is doing far worse in Japan than much of the rest of the world.
@Canucker
Well considering it's as old as 2007 I'm not surprised sales are tanking now. That's like saying the iPhone 2G is crap because it's sales are tanking now.
Symbian goes strong in Japan, that's not going to change. Sharp's and Fujitsu's Symbian phones are just stuffed features that I'm not quite sure how they do that. Sadly they use MOAPS on top of Symbian but that's going to change in the future.
@(Unverified)
face reality, LOL. you fanboys are the ones who need to face reality. anytime a new phone comes out you guys are always the first to cry "it's no iphone!" damn right it's no iphone. the iphone has already been surpassed but you fanboys just can't face reality. enjoy your low-res screen and locked down os.
i love how this news is being spun on giz by that idios J Diaz
i love how this news is being spun on giz by that idiot J Diaz
If the iphone is a successful smartphone in japan but smartphones are a failure in japan what does that make the iphone? A successful failure?
Shiller! Shilster! The Shill man..
What say you pop over to Palm hq.. and we talk about you joining us?
Surley you have to be bored with marketing easy to sell things.. we've got a challange for you, we need you to make "Pixi" sound manly.
Oh, and we're thinking as a sequel to the Pre advert, we were going to turn this whole thing on its head, by totally re-shooting it... but with Willem Dafoe in a dress in the field instead.
@(Unverified)
then you should get off these nerdy forums more often. you're referring to about 1% of Mac users, dipshit.
did you guys refer to the japanese as tiny? that's so cute.
The graphs are wrong. Here in Japan we hate iphone.
@ Atkins,
ifamiglia is making a reference to that stupid article that came up in Wired a while back that was proven to be a lie. Brian X Chen purposely misquoted Japanese journalist Nobi Hayashi and twisted his words to make it look like Japan rejects the iPhone.
As we are seeing today, clearly the Japanese market loves the iPhone above any other smart phone and of course Chen is eating his words.
@HighestRanked You mean "Tokyo loves the iPhone". After a trip to Kansai I came to the conclusion that like me, they prefer their keitai over the iPhone.
Aside- I live in China. I first got a Sharp 902SH because it looked cool. It was after I won an iPhone in a raffle that I really appreciated what my 902SH could do (the iPhone? Extensible? Only with a procedure that carries a small risk of bricking and voids the warranty). Then I moved on to a 904T, 810P, and now a SO905i. The good thing is that Sharp is pushing out a lot of its keitai to the Chinese market in January completely open so I'm getting one of those next.
@HighestRanked
Umm, not flat-out rejection, but it simply does not blend.
I can go to Japan now, buy a keitai, and - through the built-in features - buy groceries / drink beer / eat lunch with district managers / watch TV news / look up bank account.
Meanwhile, you cannot do even one of the above without attaching an eyesore of a dongle, because the iPhone does not come with any of those features as hardware. You'll sit in a corner, surfing the net via a wifi hotspot.
Your image does not sell in Japan. What the iPhone can do, the keitais were already doing it for years, and it's not true vice versa. You are an idiot and an Apple fanboy.
@Atkins what?
@Atkins The Japanese dumbphone market isn't like the US dumbphone market. The phones being left out of this "smartphone" sampling have the standard smartphone capabilities like Phone, Mobile web, email, SMS, and *MMS*. Plus they often have features like 2 way video calling, HDTV reception, and RFID purchasing. They're not as open to third party apps as the traditional western smartphones, but they definitely shouldn't be written off.
I think many people would trade their fart apps for the ability to pick up HDTV, be given turn by turn GPS walking directions to the nearest Yakiniku restaurants, or purchase drinks from by just waving your phone like Obi Wan in front of the vending machine.
"You WILL give me a Mitsuya Cider"
*Ka-chunk*
Japs will rule this one for sure
to understand just how big a failure the iphone is in the Japanese market, all you really need to do is realize that *anything* that shows up as comparable against willcom is just noise scraping long the bottom of a graph when compared against the mainstream domestic handset makers.