Samsung’s Degradation in Japan
Samsung Electronics has seen almost a 50% drop in its smartphone sales in the Japanese market due to aggressive marketing activities by Apple and Japanese rivals. In contrast to keeping the top position in China, Samsung’s sales of smartphones in Japan has been on a sharp drop in Asia’s second largest market.
According to data by technology research firm Strategy Analytics, Samsung sold 1 million smartphones in the Japanese market in Q3 of this year, down 300,000 units from the previous quarter.
Samsung’s sales in the market have been on the decline for three consecutive quarters since the fourth quarter of last year, when 1.9 million units were sold.
Samsung’s sales drop was attributable to a series of new product launches and aggressive marketing activities by Apple and remarkable advances by Japanese rivals such as Sony.
Apple signed a deal with Japan’s biggest mobile carrier NTT DoCoMo to provide its iPhones for the first time. Over the past few years, Apple had only offered its iPhones through the second and third-largest mobile carriers: KDDI and SoftBank.
With sales decreasing, Samsung’s market share fell to 9.9 percent in Q3 from 17 percent in the fourth quarter of last year.
Selling 3.8 million units in Q3, Apple dominated the Japanese smartphone market with a 38.1 percent share, up 17.1 percentage points from the previous quarter, largely due to the iPhone 5s and iPhone 5c launched in recent months.
Sony sold 1.9 million smartphones, taking the second position with 18.9 percent of the market share in the cited period, followed by Sharp Corp. and Samsung.