Thread: Elops oh s**t moment for Meego
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geohsia is offline geohsia
2011-06-05 , 07:17
Posts: 515 | Thanked: 259 times | Joined on Jan 2010
#114
Originally Posted by cBeam View Post
I'm not going into the merits of Ahonen's blog, and I admit that I do know little about the Japanese market. One thing I know is that they use a particular definition to describe "smart-phones" as opposed to "advanced function mobile phones".
Fair enough.

Advanced function phones are mainly "Made in Japan" and not counted as smartphones.

I am not clear in which functions "advanced function phones" differ from smart phones, as all functions available on smart phones are seemingly present in these advanced function phones. Some functions that have been used in Japan for years are not currently present in the U.S. (emoney, virtual wallet) or have been introduced in Japan years earlier than to the rest of the world.

Understanding how smart phones are defined it is no wonder that iOs and Android make up more than 90% of the Japanese smart phone market.

Unit wise there were about 5 Million Android devices and more than 3 Million IOS devices sold in Japan in the latest fiscal year (12 months ending 3/31/2011), on average a little more than 2 million smart phones per quarter. That does not sound that much for a highly industrialized country like Japan with a population a little less than 130 million. There must be a huge number of advanced function phones be sold.
Of the 130 million maybe 115 million have a phone. Of that, a percentage uses dumb phones, some advanced and some use smartphones. If all 115 M buy new phones a year then smartphones is less than 10%. If less than 100% buy new phones a year then that percentage increases. How much? I don't know. I would not be surprised if Android / iOS continue to grow in marketshare at the expense of advanced funtion phones.

I'd appreciate if someone more knowledgeable can explain the distinction between smart phone and advanced function phone in Japan, or has numbers showing units sold of advanced function phones.
What you also have to understand is that when we're talking about global leadership I don't hear NTT Docomo or Softbank in any discussions regarding global smartphone / cellphone trends. They are huge in their market but I would not consider them global leaders in that sense. Look at the HD TV market. HDTV's were available outside the US long before but once the US got on it, then HD TV's really took off and has affected not just TV's but cameras, video streaming on the web and etc.

There is no question Japan is ahead in terms of adoption but setting and influencing global trends, Google / Apple I think are much more of a leader globally than Japan.

You also have to consider US infrastructure costs which is much greater than most other countries. It's easier for smaller countries like Japan / Korea to implement faster DSL / fiber / wireless / HDTV technologies but in the US which is so large geographically it is considerably more difficult. When the US adopts something though they have the opportunity to really influence global markets in ways that other countries do not. Leadership is more than who was first.

For example, where's the LG Chocolate? Anyone know what OS they use? What about their app store?
 

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