Apple’s iPhone Remains at the Top of Japan’s Sliding Smartphone Market

While Apple’s market share may be slipping in China, the iPhone still sits atop Japan’s declining smartphone market, accounting for close to half of smartphone sales in the Asian country.

Japan’s smartphone market declined 3.5% year-over-year (YOY) at the end of 2023. However, Apple’s iPhone still holds the lion’s share of it. Apple first topped the Japanese smartphone market 12 years ago, and the iPhone has continued to be popular in the East Asian island country.

In recent years, Apple has been able to sell between 49% and 51% of all smartphones in Japan. According to a report from IDC, Apple accounted for 51.9% of the market in Q4 2023.

While Apple continued to top the Japanese smartphone market, overall sales of the handsets fell by 3.5%, to 8.3 million devices, compared to the same time in 2022. IDC says all four 2023 quarters saw year-over-year sales declines, with the fourth quarter being the only quarter to see smartphone shipments exceed 8 million.

“The demand started to improve in the second half of the year, led by Apple,” said IDC analysts, “indicating a diminishing impact of inflation due to the weakening yen and carrier inventory adjustments.”

Even with that Q4 improvement and a “strong demand for [Apple’s] iPhone 15 series,” the shrinking smartphone market saw Apple’s iPhone sales slip 6% in 2023. Apple’s sales shrinkage was the smallest decline of any of the top five smartphone makers.

All vendors except one saw declining sales in Q4 2023 YOY. That said, Apple’s 51.9% share of the smartphone market outperforms the rest of the top five and all other smartphone makers combined.

Google was the only smartphone vendor to improve its sales, growing by 527%, from a 1.5% market share in 2022 to a 10.7% share in 2023, which was good enough to put in in third place.

“Japan has been a market where local vendors have been exceptionally strong,” Masafumi Inbe, Market Analyst for IDC Japan said. “However, amid intensifying competition in the smartphone market, local vendors in Japan are gradually finding it difficult to compete with global vendors in terms of product development and competitiveness, including foldable smartphones and AI smartphones.”

Japanese firms in the top five are Sharp, which held second place with a 10.9% market share. Kyocera Group and Lenovo, which includes Japan’s Fujitsu, tied for fifth place with 5.4%

While any fall in smartphone sales is nothing to cheer about, Japan’s 3.5% decline in Q4 2023 was still better than the 7% YOY fall China has seen in the first six weeks of 2024. Apple also performed better in Japan than it did in China.

According to a Counterpoint Research report, after coming out on top in China in 2023, Apple’s position fell to fourth place over the first six weeks of 2024.

Vivo was China’s top-selling smartphone manufacturer for the first six weeks of 2024, grabbing an 18% market share. Huawei took second place, and Honor took third place with a 16% share of the smartphone market.

TF Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo pointed to a shift toward high-end smartphones with generative AI elements and foldable designs as reasons for the 2024 decline in iPhone sales. Kuo also says Huawei’s return to the Chinese smartphone market was another reason for the reduction in iPhone shipments.