Every Other Japanese Smartphone Sold in 2009 Was an iPhone

[Paul Daniel Ash]

According to a report in AppleInsider, Apple has claimed nearly half of the smartphone market in Japan in the year since it was introduced there. The report quotes a study by a Tokyo-based research firm that says iPhone sales represented 46.1% of the entire market in 2009.

The iPhone 3GS and iPhone 3G are the two most popular smartphones in Japan by a wide margin, with the older iPhone 3G still on top with at 24.6% and the iPhone 3GS on track to surpass it with 21.5%. The phone in third place, Sharp's Advanced W-ZERO3, dropped to 14.6% this year. Willcom's 03 fell from from 8.3% last year to 6.8% in 2009, with the original W-ZERO3 losing 50% of its market share and ending the year with just 4.5% of sales. Every other platform, including Android, took only slivers of the market. The HTC Magic, marketed in Japan by NTT DoCoMo as the HT-03A, was down at 10th place with 2.3%, and most other smartphones garnered under 1%.

According to the study by Impress Corporation, the iPhone's ease of use and wide selection of apps drove much higher data use, with 77.3% of iPhone 3GS owners online for more than 30 minutes a day. 66.8% of Android and iPhone 3G users use data for the same amount of time each day, with 54.6% of Windows Mobile users online for that long.

All smartphone users told the researchers that they think their phones boost their productivity, but a much higher proportion of iPhone users feel the same.

image via The Unofficial Apple Weblog

[fluffer]

godzilla is massive so that means that iphone must be the new iphone giganto??

[Fallguy]

Lets see what happens come June . 4G Baby !

[PlatoTheForms]

Lets see what happens come June . 4G Baby !

Yes, I hope the speed is not 4g, but rather at&t to speed up the 3g network; otherwise they'll be charging 40$ for that change.

[thetoothfairy]

Love the pic! LOL

Yeah would love to see at&t speed up the 3g and also get more coverage in more areas!

[confucious]

But everyone knows they have such wonderful advanced phones in Japan....
Strange how they still all want the iPhone

[rhekt]

i got my boss turned onto the iphone and he loves it! hes allready got plans on jailbreaking

[realjaja]

What's also interesting is how many people
who bought the iPhone, use it as their second phone.

Reason?

RFID
10meg+ camera
and most importantly the lack of email forwarding on the old carriers.

[confucious]

I don't know of anyone who uses their iPhone as a second phone

RFID? Does anyone use that?
Lack of email forwarding?
I have a proper camera for decent photos, while the iPhone camera isn't very good it is OK for snaps and no phone camera is very good regardless of the number of pixels (are there any 10Mp? I thought 8 was the most?)

[hollow0]

And they said Asia didn't are about the iPhone because it was inferior..lol pfftt.

I also, would like to see the 4G and what it has to offer!