iPhone 5S/C made up 76% of new smartphone sales in Japan this October
Japan is probably the second best iPhone market, after U.S. At least in market share. China either already is, or will soon be bigger in absolute numbers. — Apple has been doing very well in Japan for years.
Context & Ripple Effects
Japan has traveled a long arc since Business Week asked in late 2007 whether the country even needed the iPhone (Does Japan Need the iPhone?). By 2010 the device was pulling global app developers into the Japanese market (a developer land-grab AP covered), and in March 2012 Apple became Japan's top consumer brand for the first time (that milestone).
The October figure — 76% of new smartphone sales captured by just two models — puts hard numbers behind that trajectory, and the pickup was unusually broad: Fortune, Daring Fireball, TUAW, Cult of Mac and four other outlets all carried the same stat within days. Unwired View's framing that Japan is likely Apple's second-best iPhone market after the U.S. by share is confirmed, though its claim that China already exceeds or will soon exceed Japan in absolute iPhone numbers remains unconfirmed.
First-order effects
- With three-quarters of new smartphones sold in Japan being iPhones, every rival OS's local share of incremental sales shrinks to a quarter of the market in a single month.
- Japanese carrier channels are now effectively iPhone-led, making Apple's two-model lineup the reference point against which domestic handset lineups compete.
Second-order effects
- Developer attention follows installed-base growth: the pattern that drew global app developers to Japan in 2010 strengthens further when new-device sales skew this heavily toward iOS, making Japan an iOS-first market for app launches.
- Android vendors competing in Japan face pressure to differentiate on price or features rather than ecosystem, since the ecosystem argument now runs against them.
Third-order effects
- If the unconfirmed claim that China surpasses Japan in absolute iPhone volumes holds, Apple's Asian business becomes a two-pillar structure — Japan for share of market, China for scale — reshaping where Apple allocates supply and marketing effort.
- A national market where one vendor takes three-quarters of new sales is the kind of concentration that historically invites regulatory scrutiny of carrier-vendor arrangements.
The trend: Six years after commentators doubted Japan needed the iPhone at all, the country has become Apple's clearest case of near-total capture of new-device sales in a major developed market.