iPhone Snares 72% of Japanese Smartphone Business in 2009
Byline:
J.R. Bookwalter
Byline:
jrbookwalter
Enhanced Teaser:
The iPhone is clearly a huge hit for Apple judging from Cupertino’s quarterly results released this week -- particularly in The Land of the Rising Sun, where the device now accounts for a whopping 72 percent of all smartphones shipped there.
The iPhone is clearly a huge hit for Apple judging from Cupertino’s quarterly results released this week -- particularly in The Land of the Rising Sun, where the device now accounts for a whopping 72 percent of all smartphones shipped there.Bloomberg BusinessWeek is reporting that Apple shipped 1.69 million iPhones in Japan in the entire fiscal year 2009 which ended March 31st. That equates to Apple landing at the top spot in that country’s smartphone market, according to Tokyo-based MM Research Institute Ltd.Most surprising, the iPhone is being offered there by Japan’s third-largest wireless carrier, Softbank Corp., yet the device managed to account for 72 percent of all smartphones shipped in the country in 2009. By comparison, HTC Corp. lands in second place with only 11 percent, followed by Toshiba with 6.8 percent.The iPhone is even helping its competitors, with interest in handsets that can surf the web and download music, video and apps more than doubling to 2.34 million units in the fiscal year, while regular mobile phones declined four percent to 34.4 million.“The iPhone was pretty much the sole winner in fiscal 2009, but the market will continue to expand this fiscal year as competition from Google’s Android and Microsoft’s ‘Windows Phone’ heats up,” the report said.Smartphone shipments in Japan are estimated to exceed three million units over the next 12 months that began on April 1st, even though MM Research anticipates the overall cell phone market there to contract for a third year in a row.iPhone shipments in Japan accounted for 5.6 percent of the total 30.1 million units that Apple sold worldwide in the 12 month fiscal year that ended in March. Released in Japan in July, 2008, the iPhone has shipped about 2.3 million units there as of March 31, according to MM Research’s Hideaki Yokota.Google’s Android, by comparison, is expected to see is global handset base leap to 68 million units by 2013 from only 690,000 in 2008, according to data announced by IDC Corp. back in January. Android is expected to outpace Apple’s iPhone OS and Microsoft’s Windows Mobile products to become second only to Nokia’s Symbian.
http://www.maclife.com/article/news/iphone_snares_72_japanese_smartphone_business_2009
