comScore: Japan's mobile phone market and media consumption in February 2012

According to a report released by comScore for the first three months ending in February 2012, Sharp is the largest mobile phone manufacturer in Japan, with a mobile phone share of 23.5%. Google's Android platform has the largest market share, reaching 61.4%, and Apple's market share is 34.2%.

In February 2012, smartphones surpassed feature phones to become the mobile phone with the highest market share in Japan. The high penetration rate of smartphones has brought new opportunities to Hong Kong's mobile Internet companies. Japanese users have made extensive use of mobile Internet in the era of feature phones. Smartphones, as devices with more enhanced and expanded functions than feature phones, will continue to drive the growth of mobile business.

One of the four mobile phones is from Sharp

In the three months ending February 2012, 101.7 million Japanese users aged 13 and over owned a mobile phone. Sharp ranked first among Japanese mobile phone manufacturers with a 23.5% share, followed by Panasonic with a market share of 13.8%, Fujitsu with a share of 11.8%, NEC and Sony with shares of 9.7% and 7.5% respectively. Apple ranked eighth with a share of 6.5%, and its market share has increased by 1.6% since November 2011.

Android smartphones have the highest share in Japan, while iPhones are growing rapidly

As of February 2012, more than 19.3 million Japanese users own smartphones, a 28% increase from November 2011. Android's share of smartphone operating systems reached 61.4%, Apple ranked second with 34.2%, up 1.3 percentage points from November 2011, and Microsoft ranked third with a share of 3.9%.

*Smartphones are defined as those phones that use the Android, Apple, Microsoft, RIM and Symbian platforms.

Mobile content usage

Through the analysis of mobile phone users' usage behavior, it was found that 57.6 million users accessed email services on their mobile phones, accounting for more than half of mobile phone users. Japanese mobile phone users prefer to use mobile programs (55.4%), higher than mobile browsers (52.4%). In that month, 45.4% of users sent text messages to other mobile phones, and nearly 1/5 of mobile phone users visited social networks or blog sites on their mobile phones. 18.8% of users watched TV or videos on their mobile phones.