Japanese smartphone market grows by factor of six in a year

Research and Markets has published a report analysing the smartphone market in Japan. The market size is estimated to have grown to about 600,000 in 2006 from about 100,000 in 2005 thanks to the expansion of the business market and increase in models.

The report provides a definition of smartphone, examines current trends and strategies among the Japanese operators, and analyzes the main operating systems (OS) with a focus on version characteristics and development trends. In addition, the report presents opportunities and barriers to the future growth of the Japanese smartphone market.

The report examines smartphones in a narrow sense, referring to a device that is equipped with Symbian UIQ, Nokia S60/S80, Windows Mobile, Palm, Linux OS and BlackBerry. 

To forecast the smartphone market beyond 2007, early-state Japanese notebook PC and mobile handset markets in the mid-1990s were analyzed; the smartphone market was compared with notebook PCs and handset markets to extract relations between them. The economic aspect was also considered. The results show that the market size is expected to grow every year by 78.6% (on the average) to reach 6 million units, occupying 13% of the total mobile handset market.

Meanwhile, mobile handset functions are becoming more diversified and advanced; therefore a need for high-performance operating systems (OS) is increasing. Shortened handset purchase cycles and reduced selling prices are stimulating the expansion of those OSs. In addition, a smartphone equipped with messaging and office applications that are comparable to personal computers is attracting attentions in the Japanese business market which is expanding with the introduction of Mobile Number Portability (MNP).

(http://www.researchandmarkets.com/reports/c61279)