Smartphone adoption growing in Japan
The report found that Japanese users are continuing to adopt smartphone devices, with Apple and Google platforms seeing significant increases in subscribers.
Japanese beginning to adopt smartphones
Compared to other mobile markets such as the US and Europe, smartphone adoption (defined as those phones that use the Microsoft, Google, Apple, Symbian or Palm platforms) has remained relatively low in Japan. Recently, carriers and operating systems have made the push into Japan to introduce smartphones into this sophisticated mobile market.
Analysis of smartphone adoption during December 2010 revealed that 7 million mobile users in Japan (7% of the total mobile market) are smartphone owners, an increase of 33.5% from September 2010 when comScore first introduced its MobiLens service into Japan. Many smartphones in Japan have advanced capabilities such as mobile wallet, 1seg TV and waterproof features, all of which encourage current feature phone users to switch to smartphone devices.
| Smartphone and Non-Smartphone Usage in Japan December 2010 Total Japan Mobile Audience Age 13+ Source: comScore MobiLens | ||
|---|---|---|
| Total Audience (000) | Share of Total Mobile Audience | |
| Total Mobile Audience | 100,900 | 100.0% |
| Non-Smartphone Users | 93,925 | 93.1% |
| Smartphone Users | 6,975 | 6.9% |
When looking at smartphone platform adoption in Japan, the study found that Apple and Google account for the largest number of smartphone users. In December 2010, 3.8 million smartphone subscribers used Apple devices, up 48% from June 2010. Google Android devices witnessed a surge in users growing to more than 2 million in December 2010, up from just 435 000 users in June.
| Apple, Google and Microsoft Smartphone Platform Audience in Japan June, September and December 2010 Total Japan Mobile Audience Age 13+ Source: comScore MobiLens | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Total Audience (000) | |||
| June-2010 | Sept-2010 | Dec-2010 | |
| Total Smartphone Audience | 5,223 | 5,702 | 6,975 |
| Apple | 2,557 | 3,347 | 3,787 |
| 435 | 841 | 2,174 | |
| Microsoft | 2,144 | 1,475 | 831 |
comScore MobiLens provides an unparalleled view of the Japan, US and European mobile media landscapes, connecting data on mobile consumer demographics and behaviours with device capabilities to providing brand marketers with insights into technology and consumer trends in the dynamic mobile media market.
Shin Imamura, data technology division, marketing department at OPT, Inc, who have recently adopted the use of comScore MobiLens data, commented, "We have long been researching and analyzing Japan's mobile environment, and we expect that through the adoption of comScore MobiLens, we will further deepen our understanding of Japan's mobile users."
For more information on comScore MobiLens, go to www.comscore.com/Products_Services/Product_Index/MobiLens
Source: comScore
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