If you are brand or a marketing communication agency in Japan or China devising a mobile marketing plan, then it is best to look at smartphones as the first screen of choice. This is because recent studies by IDC and comScore show that in both China and Japan smartphones sales have outnumbered feature phones between April and June 2012.
If we see the Chinese market, IDC reports that around 44 million smartphones were shipped during the period which makes it 51 percent of the total handheld phones shipped in China. Interestingly, there is bigger focus on affordability of the phones, and internet companies like Baidu, Alibaba have been pushing into the smartphone segment with cost effective mobile OSs like Baidu Cloud OS, and Alibaba Aliyun OS. These OSs are supposed to drive the smartphones into where feature phones are now in China – making the product more mass market. In fact according to research firm Strategy Analytics China’s smartphone market overtook the US at the end of 2011.
Meanwhile in Japan, comScore noted in its market survey that more than 24 million people owned smartphones during the three months ending in June. It represented 23.5 percent of the entire mobile population. The study shows that smartphone adoption has increased rapidly in 2012, growing 43 percent versus the end of 2011. In fact 102.7 million people age 13 and older used mobile devices in Japan which included feature phones and smartphone devices.
In China Samsung continued to be the most shipped brand with 19 percent market share. Lenovo also made big strides in the smartphones market due to continued retail push and operator sales. In fact Apple was fourth in rank after ZTE in China. While in Japan it was Sharp ranked as the top OEM with 22.6 percent followed by Panasonic with 13.6 percent share. Fujitsu captured the number three ranking in June with 11.8 percent of mobile subscribers, followed by NEC at 8.9 percent and Sony at 7.9 percent to round out the top five.
In both the countries, Apple’s phones saw a drop in numbers. China and Japan adroid phones saw higher growth than iOS based phones. In Japan Google’s android platform accounted for the majority of smartphone market at 64.1 percent, followed by Apple with 32.3 percent of the market, reported comScore. Industry watchers claim that the reason in the drop could be because Apple generally launches its new versions in the market later than in other markets, even though China remains a major revenue driver for Apple.