After a long struggle to gain a foothold inside of the lucrative and thriving young smartphone market in Japan, it appears that Apple has finally made inroads.
The latest market data out of Asia shows that Apple increased its share of Japan’s mobile-phone market to more than a third in the past year.
Aiding Apple in this effort was the decision by NTT Docomo Inc., Japan’s largest wireless carrier, to begin offering the iPhone to subscribers in September of 2013.
“Apple boosted iPhone shipments in Japan to 36.6 percent of the market in the year ended March, up from 25.5 percent a year earlier,” a new Bloomberg report reads. “Japan’s MM Research Institute Ltd. says Apple shipped more than 14 million phones in Japan the past fiscal year alone.”
After Apple, Sharp shipped some 5 million mobile phones for a 13 percent share, while Sony shipped 4.84 million handsets (12.3 percent share of the Japan market). And what about Samsung, you ask? Samsung ranked 6th overall (5.7 percent share).
