Japan Mobile Phone Sales for Q2 of 2007
Gartner is reporting that worldwide sales of mobile phones to end users in the second quarter of 2007 reached 270.9 million units, a 17.4 per cent increase from the same period last year. In Japan, sales to end users in the second quarter of 2007 were 12.1 million units, an increase of 10.3 per cent from the second quarter of 2006 but a decline of 17.5 percent from the first quarter of 2007.
“Despite a quarter-on-quarter drop, this was the second-biggest second quarter in Japan’s mobile devices history, since the same period in 2003, when camera phones drove replacement sales,” said Nahoko Mitsuyama, principal analyst for mobile communications research at Gartner, based in Tokyo.
It would be a reasonable conclusion that the current crop of models, with 1seg digital tv and FeliCa embedded m-commerce chips, are driving this latest upgrade cycle. We note with interest the steady year-on-year sales increase by SonyEricsson, gaining just over 3 percent market share.