Smartphone market in Japan - statistics & facts

Japan is one of the largest smartphone markets in the world. The country can also be considered one of the early innovators of mobile phone culture. The first smartphone to be massively adopted within a country had e-mail capabilities and was introduced as early as 1999 by NTT Docomo in Japan. More features followed shortly after, such as 3G networks in 2001 and the world’s first wallet phone in 2004. Despite widespread acknowledgment and praise, Japanese mobile phones were never fully able to gain a foothold in overseas markets. Instead, the industry turned excessively inwards, a tendency that has been called “Galápagos syndrome” due to the high specialization achieved by focusing on a single market. However, the domestic dissemination of mobile phones was more than profitable and gave Japanese phone makers little incentive to venture into overseas markets.

Apple’s iPhone is the dominant brand

As Japanese consumers are highly discerning when it comes to mobile phones and brands, foreign phone makers initially struggled to enter the market. In 2008, just when the smartphone business climate started to change, with a shrinking demand due to a recession and an aging society, the first Apple iPhone hit the Japanese market. Lacking some features essential for Japanese consumers, such as infrared ports, a QR code scanner, TV tuner, and emojis, it initially achieved rather disappointing sales results, as consumers did not see the benefits of using iPhones instead of domestic phones. However, this changed in the following years. SoftBank played a big part in Apple’s success by obtaining exclusive rights to the iPhone for three years and running an aggressive marketing campaign that involved highly affordable prices for iPhones. In addition, Apple partly adjusted its products to the Japanese market. As time progressed, Japanese mobile phone manufacturers lost large market shares to Apple, which became the leading smartphone vendor in the Japanese market. As a result, iPhones now regularly dominate the ranking of the best-selling smartphone models in Japan.

Major mobile carriers introduced 5G networks

The smartphone penetration rate among households in Japan was close to 89 percent in 2021, which indicates the high relevance smartphones have for people in their everyday lives. For many years, smartphone retail in Japan has been dominated by three major mobile carriers: NTT Docomo, au by KDDI, and SoftBank. From March 2020 onward, all three traditional mobile carriers began providing 5G network services in stages, starting in limited urban areas. Rakuten Mobile, which became the country’s fourth proper mobile carrier in 2020, started rolling out its 5G service in September of that year. The postponed Tokyo 2020 Olympics and Paralympics, which were carried out in the summer of 2021, provided an important time frame for the implementation of 5G services. As 5G offers a vastly improved speed, capacity, and latency, it is expected that its increasing adoption will prove beneficial for areas such as live-streaming and mobile gaming.
This text provides general information. Statista assumes no liability for the information given being complete or correct. Due to varying update cycles, statistics can display more up-to-date data than referenced in the text.
Published by Statista Research Department, Aug 31, 2023

Key insights

Number of smartphone users
86.6m
Mobile phone subscriptions market share of NTT Docomo
41.6%
Monthly market share of Android among smartphone operating systems
51.1%
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Monthly market share held by smartphone OS in Japan 2016-2022

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NTT Docomo
NTT Docomo
SoftBank Corp.
SoftBank Corp.
Mobile gaming in Japan
Mobile gaming in Japan
Mobile internet usage in Japan
Mobile internet usage in Japan
App usage in Japan
App usage in Japan

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