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Research and Markets: Japanese Smartphone Market: Emerging Opportunities

Japanese Smartphone Market - Emerging Opportunities report analyzes the smartphone market in Japan. 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.

In December 2006, Willcom, a Japanese operator, introduced W-ZERO3 series smartphones. In 2006, NTT DoCoMo and SoftBank started to introduce Windows Mobile-powered smartphones supplied from HTC, a Taiwan-based device manufacturer. HTC established its branch in Japan in April, 2006 and now seems to get ready to expand its presence in Japan. In addition, Nokia is trying to strengthen its smartphone business in Japan by supplying Symbian S60-powered E and N series to SoftBank. NTT DoCoMo started providing BlackBerry devices and services in September 2006, which are popular among European and U.S. businessmen.

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 the personal computers is attracting attentions in the Japanese business market which is expanding with the introduction of Mobile Number Portability (MNP).

In this report, the smartphone is defined as two types; smartphone in a broad sense and in a narrow sense. The smartphone in a broad sense refers to a device that provides more PDA-like functions than the existing handsets, regardless of the type of operating system (OS). But in a narrow sense, smartphone refers to a device that is equipped with Symbian UIQ, Nokia S60/S80, Windows Mobile, Palm, Linux OS and BlackBerry. This report focuses mainly on smartphones in the narrow sense. NTT DoCoMo's MOAP devices with sales reaching to 20 million fall into the category of broad-sense smartphones, therefore those are not included in this report.

Key Topics Covered:

• Executive Summary
• 1. Introduction
• 2. Japanese Smartphone Market
• 3. Characteristics and Development Directions by Smartphone OS
• 4. Smartphone Development Trends by Major Makers
• 5. Smartphone Lineups and Strategies of Japanese Operators
• 6. Conclusion - Japanese Smartphone Market Key Points
• List of Tables
• List of Figures

For more information visit http://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/c26fe8/japanese_smartphon

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