iPhone Getting 46.1% Share of Japan’s Smart Phones

Tuesday, December 22, 2009

iPhones big in Japan vator.tv

Impress R+D, a Japanese company focussing on internet development and market research has released the results of a recent survey showing the iPhone is running away with the smart phone market in Japan. Their December 11 Book of Smartphones shows that in 2009 the outright winner is the 3G iPhone with 24.6% of the market and the more powerful 3Gs following with a 21.5%. This gives Apple an impressive total of 46.1% market share in Japan. The closest competition (Sharp’s Advanced Zero3) while popular in 2008, has lost out to the iPhone and has only 14.6% market share currently. Impress R+D attributes the iPhones success to its ease of use and the App store.

Apparently Apple’s iPhone carrier in Japan, Softbank Mobile, has been hitting it right with customers with great rates and running major advertising campaigns via TV and those impressive billboards Japan is known for. The Japanese carrier offered a free 8GB iPhone 3G (or highly discounted 16GB iPhone 3G) for those who signed up for certain two-year contracts in February 2009.

softbank-iphone

All this work by Softbank definitely has paid off big time for Apple in a country that usually preferred their proprietary gimicky phones. All these Japanese customers will drive an increase in applications developed by and for the Japanese market. Should make for an interesting opportunity for those of us outside of Japan to investigate their culture and language.

This is an iPhone Trend story by The Apps Machine