Japan finishes 2008 with 110 million mobile phone subscribers

The “low-baller” competition led by Softbank and eMobile is on in Japan and DoCoMo seems to be back in the game while KDDI and Willcom are out of steam. The December 2008 new adds data from TCA shows just that (see above). Overall, Japan carriers including PHS operator Willcom added 401 thousand new subscribers in December 2008 boosting the country’s total number of mobile phone users to over 110 million equal to 87% of population penetration.

As for the carrier market shares, DoCoMo is in comfortable first-class seat with over 49% of the market while the second and third contenders KDDI and Softbank are chugging behind with 27% and 18% market shares correspondently (see below).

Source: TCA

Features aside, Japanese users value design most when buying a smartphone

According to a market research by Impress R&D, 61.8% of respondents look at the design when buying a smartphone. The next thing they check after the design is the price they are going to pay for the device (45.2%). Among other important things are the crispiness of the display (40.9%), form factor (40.1%), responsiveness (39.2%), size of the display (39.2%), etc.

Source: Impress R&D

iPhone in Japan turns into TV tuner

Now you can't blame iPhone in Japan for not being capable of oneseg TV reception, a must-have feature for Japanese phones. Softbank is shipping a stand-alone oneseg & battery hardware box that will serve as a TV tuner and battery for iPhone. It can send over the TV signal to iPhone using the WiFi connection or be connected to iPhone via a cable when used as an extra battery. It sells for around 100 dollars. Additionally, users will need to download a free oneseg app from App Store in order to watch oneseg TV.