Smartphones take lead over feature phones

The study surveyed more than 4000 Japanese mobile subscribers and found Sharp to be the top mobile handset manufacturer overall with 23.5% market share. Google's Android platform accounted for the majority of smartphone market at 61.4%, followed by Apple with 34.2% of the market.

"Smartphones surpassed feature phones as the most acquired device type in February 2012, signalling an important shift in Japan's mobile market," said Daizo Nishitani, vice president of comScore Japan KK. "The rise in smartphone adoption opens the door to tremendous opportunity for publishers and advertisers to expand their reach and increase engagement with key consumer segments through this channel. Japanese mobile phone users were already highly engaged with their devices, but with the added functionality and higher levels of mobile media consumption we should expect to see significant changes in behaviour among the Japanese mobile population in 2012."

Sharp accounts for 1 in 4 mobile devices in Japan

For the three-month average period ending in February, 101.7 million people age 13 and older used mobile devices in Japan (feature phone and smartphone devices). Device manufacturer Sharp ranked as the top OEM with 23.5% of Japanese mobile subscribers, followed by Panasonic with 13.8% share. Fujitsu captured the #3 ranking in February with 11.8% of mobile subscribers, followed by NEC at 9.7% and Sony at 7.5% to round out the top five.

Apple, which ranked as the eighth largest OEM in Japan with 6.5% market share, experienced the strongest gain among device manufacturers increasing 1.6 percentage points since November 2011.

Android accounts for majority of Japan's smartphone market, Apple sees strongest growth

More than 19.3 million people in Japan owned smartphones during the three months ending in February, up 28% versus November. Android's share of the smartphone market reached 61.4%, while Apple ranked second with 34.2% of the smartphone market (up 1.3 percentage points versus November 2011), followed by Microsoft, which accounted for 3.9% in February 2012.

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

Mobile content usage

Analysis of selected activities consumers performed on their mobile phones found that 57.6 million users accessed email on their phone, representing more than half of all mobile phone users. Japanese mobile owners were more likely to use an application (55.4%) than a mobile browser (52.4%), while 45.4% sent a text message to another phone during the month. Nearly 1 in 5 mobile users accessed social networking or blog sites on their phone, while slightly less (18.8%) watched TV or video.