An analyst note from Barclay’s justified their upgrade of Japanese carrier NTT DoCoMo’s stock by impressive performance of the Sony Ericsson Xperia X10. Apparently DoCoMo sold 120,000 X10s since it launched in April, a number they couldn’t even come close to with the HTC Magic, which launched last summer and only hit 80,000. The BlackBerry Bold 9000 and Toshiba TG01 mustered 60,000 sales each within similar timeframes, making the X10 DoCoMo’s top seller for April, and likely the top smartphone for a long time to come.
Smartphones are a tricky market in Japan, since so many of their dumbphones are mind-bogglingly smart – HVGA displays, 5 megapixel cameras and TV tuners on flip phones are not uncommon over there. It’s good to see at least one is making solid progress, but I do wonder what it is about the X10 that has managed to catch on over there. Is it the gigangtic 4″ screen? Maybe the custom TimeScape and MediaScape apps struck a chord in Japan that just doesn’t exist over here. Whatever the case, good on SE for the success – they need it if they want to compete with iPhone in Japan.
[PRLog via Xperia X10 Blog]