Virtually all of the mobile phones now sold in Japan are now 3G so any further increases in Japanese mobile shipments are going to need to come from growing the market.
today.reuters.com
Japan Oct mobile phone shipments up 13.5 pct yr/yr
Tue Dec 12, 2006 3:54am ET
Market View
TOKYO, Dec 12 (Reuters) - Japanese mobile phone shipments in October rose 13.5 percent from a year earlier, after three months of declines, on the roll-out of new third-generation (3G) models, an industry group said on Tuesday.
In October, shipments from makers such as Sharp Corp. (6753.T: Quote, NEWS , Research), NEC Corp. (6701.T: Quote, NEWS , Research) and Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. Ltd (6752.T: Quote, NEWS , Research) reached 3.6 million units, Japan Electronics and Information Technology Association (JEITA) said.
The 3G models, which allow faster music downloads and Web surfing, made up 97 percent of the total shipments, JEITA said.
Local operators NTT DoCoMo Inc. (9437.T: Quote, NEWS , Research), KDDI Corp. (9433.T: Quote, NEWS , Research) and Softbank Corp. (9984.T: Quote, NEWS , Research) have been increasing their efforts to upgrade their customers to 3G with new price plans and handsets, making Japan the world's biggest market for 3G phones.
Other Japanese handset makers include Casio Computer Co. (6952.T: Quote, NEWS , Research), Fujitsu Ltd. (6702.T: Quote, NEWS , Research) and Kyocera Corp. (6971.T: Quote, NEWS , Research).
The following table shows Japanese domestic shipments, in millions, with year-on-year percentage changes. No data was released for individual companies.
OCT SEPT AUG JULY Shipments 3.60 3.19 2.88 3.30 Y/Y pct change 13.5 -18.7 -5.2 -6.2 |
