IDC Japan reported that iPhone has, for the first time, topped the smartphone sales in Japan, riding the wave of iPhone 4S release in last Oct. Apple successfully grasped the largest share, 26.6% in mobile phone (including smartphones and feature phones) shipment in last quarter of 2011, in Japan.
Japan is well-known for resistance to foreign vendors in its almost enclosed market, which is flooding with only-sellable-in-Japan mobile phones. Therefore it’s a prestigious award for Apple to be able to climb to the top in the nation with iPhone. Japan has since then, be more open to foreign operating system such as iOS and Android.
Followed by Fujitsu Ltd., which took over the mobile phone operations of Toshiba Corp., 18.3% share and Sharp Corp. ranked third with 15.7%. Source: The Mainichi Daily News
For year 2011, Sharp topped the shipment rankings with a 20.1% share, maintaining the top slot for the sixth consecutive year, followed by Fujitsu-Toshiba at 18.8% and Apple at 14%.
Shipment of smartphones sees a surge of 6.9 million units from a year earlier, inhaled 64.7% of total increased shipments in Japan of 15.2%, or 10.65 million units.
But where is Samsung, the best seller of Android smartphone? Samsung once topped the chart of best-selling smartphone in Japan in Q1 2011. The company is also the owner to the strongest contender to the iPhone, Galaxy S. However good in sales record in Japan, Samsung is surprisingly excluded in IDC analysis.
Meanwhile, Samsung remains the main player behind Android until today, I am rightfully being skeptical about IDC’s report.
Neil Mawston, Director at Strategy Analytics believes that the healthy demand for the Android-powered Galaxy S at NTT DoCoMo drove Samsung growth in Japan. Samsung is the main player behind surging Android smartphone sales, followed by Sharp. Japan had always had a unique competitive landscape, but is now looking more and more like any other advanced smartphone market in the world as Android has flown by iOS in just three quarters Samsung topped global smartphone sales rankings last year, more than quadrupling smartphone sales to 97.4 million from 2010, according to data from Boston-based Strategy Analytics. Apple finished a close second, with sales of 93 million smartphones. Sales of the Galaxy S II, which began in May, surpassed 10 million units quicker than any other Samsung mobile device. Let’s see how Galaxy S II will change the way the chart should look like after its launch in Japan, Q1 2012. Based on jaw-dropping sales generated by Samsung smartphones in 2011, it’s hard to believe it did not reserve a seat in Japan’s mobile phones sales chart. In conclusion, as a reader, I strongly suggest we can’t simply count on any reporters from self-claimed research firm nowadays. Can we?
