Japanese Smartphone Market News & Trends

Image by laurence.thurion via Flickr This article [Japanese] by Japanese daily Fuji Sankei gives some good insights into the Japanese smartphone market.

• It was predicted Apple/Softbank would have sold 1 million iPhones here. Although the stats are not released, it is predicted that they have only sold around 200,000 and sales have drastically slowed so they may only sell 350,000 by the end of the year. The latest talk out on the streets seems to be the the iPhone is being dubbed a relative failure here.
  
• AU/KDDI plan to release smartphones by the end of the year, Japan Communications will enter the market this month and HTC will also release more devices.
• Samsung is aiming to release their Omnia Windows Mobile device here.
  
• NTT DoCoMo's strategy is to focus on business users.
• Both KDDI's UQ Communications and Willcom are considering smartphones for their next generation networks (WiMax and Willcom Core) that will be launched next year boasting speeds of 20 megabits/second

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