The iPhone’s been big in Japan for awhile: back in 2009, it commanded an amazing 72.2% market share of the nation’s smartphone segment. That’s a huge chunk of the pie, but because most Japanese customers were gravitating towards featurephones over smartphones back in 2009, that 72.2% market share only actually translated to 4.9% of the entire Japanese cell phone market.
Not to worry, though: smartphone sales in Japan have continued to grow over the last year, and the iPhone is still the best selling smartphone in all of Nippon.
The data comes from Tokyo-based MMRI, who found that a total of 2.23 million smartphones were sold in Japan between April and September this year. Of the smartphone sold, the iPhone sprang ahead as the big sales leader, commanding 60.1% share of all smartphones sold. Sony Ericsson handsets were the second most popular smartphones in Japan for that period, but even then, they only managed to sell 460,000 handsets to the iPhone’s 1.34 million.
Granted, the iPhone 4 came out during that period, which doubtlessly led to greater sales… but as the traditional cell phone and feature phone market in Japan continues to shrink, the iPhone is positioned to be a big winner in the Japanese mobile space.