Mobile geeks adore the Japanese mobile phone industry because their devices, although nothing more than glorified dumb phones, come packed with features including ultra high resolution cameras, the ability to capture 1080p video, NFC to pay for items at a grocery store, hop on public transportation, or even open your front door, and they also have free over the air television. When the iPhone was released in the land of the rising sun many predicted it would fail because it didn’t include many of the above mentioned features. It was a step backwards, yet that didn’t stop the Jesus Phone from capturing 12.2% of the market in Q3 2010, making it the 5th most popular device according to IDC Japan.
This is the first time Apple has broken 10% market share in a country who sells handsets that rarely, if ever, get exported to other continents. The market leader, Sharp, had 18.8% market share during the same quarter as Apple’s new milestone, so that gives you a hint as to how competitive and how differentiated the market is over there.
With the next iPhone due to be announced in half a year, we’re hoping that it’ll come with NFC built in. Rumors of a CDMA variant for Verizon is also good news for Japan’s second largest operator KDDI, who uses the same technology. More operators offering the iPhone is a sure fire way of increasing market share. We’ve seen that happen in the UK, in Germany, and hopefully soon in the USA. More Japanese handset makers, including Sharp, have committed to using Android, so we’ll see how the landscape changes during the next few months. In Japan operators release phones twice a year, in much the same way the fashion industry has a Spring and Fall collection. We’ll be keeping an eye out for anything worthy of being called mind blowing.
[Via: All Things Digital]