iPhone Holds 46 Percent Of Japanese Smartphone Market

The fact that the iPhone grabbed 46 percent of the Japanese smartphone market is certainly a nice headline, and there’s no denying that it’s an achievement. The only thing that dampens this mood slightly is that the smartphone market in Japan isn’t all that big, as the cell phone scene is dominated by cell phone lineups from carriers that have a whole range of different offerings ranging from mobile TV, perfume holders and all sorts of weird stuff that you generally only see in Japan. If you take a look at the cell phone vendors’ market share in Japan, you’ll see the giants such as Sharp, Panasonic, Fujitsu and NEC totaling up for a 72.8% market share, while Apple is bunched up in the “others” group, which has 22.6% of the market share. Still, it’ll be interesting to see how Apple tackles the Japanese market in the long term.