KDDI au's top ten selling phone models

GfK, a market research company, published ranks of top selling mobile phones with each operator in Japan during the last week of November. This post will cover KDDI au. See table below for the top 10 sellers with au brand.

KDDI au Top Ten
1 (1)	Toshiba W53T
2 (2)	Casio Exilim W53CA
3 (3)	Sharp W52SH
4 (4)	Sanyo W52SA
5 (5)	Kyocera A5528K
6 (8)	Sony Ericsson W53S
7 (6)	Casio W52CA
8 (7)	Panasonic W52P
9 (9)	Toshiba W54T
10 (20)	Kyocera W53K

Source: GfK via ITMedia

Another good point for Sanyo in the U.S.

U.S. cell phone users are more satisfied with their phones now than they were a year ago, according to a consumer study released Thursday by J.D. Power and Associates. And they praise Sanyo not Motorola for delivering the best handsets in terms of physical design, operation, features and battery function. According to J.D. Power and Associates, Sanyo ranked highest in overall customer satisfaction, followed by LG, Samsung and Sony Ericsson. Motorola ended up in the rankings just below the industry average, but Nokia performed even lousier - shy 5 points of the industry average's 101 mark.

Sanyo Katana: the refreshed look on thin form factor

Credit: pcsintel.com via Engadget Mobile

If the shots above are really of Sanyo's Katana 6600 handset, then Sanyo did a great job of...copying Motorola's Razr following the "thin" trend in handset manufacturing. While Katana does closely resemble the look of Motorola's Razr, it definitely a break-through for the Japanese maker in terms of design implementation and overall coolness. US carrier Sprint is surely to win some customers with Katana. The only thing to complain about Katana is its standard features, which, according to Engadget Mobile, include a "mere VGA camera and Bluetooth". Plus, Katana is lacking EV-DO support. The presence of a 2.2-inch QVGA display is to be appreciated though. Overall, Japanese makers who plan to expand abroad should closely watch Sanyo’s moves for the learning purposes.

Gartner: 45 million handsets shipped in Japan in 2005

According to Gartner, Japanese carriers sold 11.7 million handsets in 4Q 2005, while the year 2005 total handset shipments reached 45 million terminals. The demand for music playback feature by youngsters drove the handset replacement purchases.

Among the top Japanese handset makers mentioned by Gartner were Sony Ericsson (5th place), Panasonic (8), NEC (9) and Sanyo (10). Apart from Sony Ericsson, a joint venture between Sony and Swedish Ericsson, Japan’s domestic makers did not expand their market shares, failing to address the market needs or finding niche markets. The fragmentation of the domestic market also did not help improve the situation, because standalone Japanese makers lack the economies of scale to compete with the world leaders.

Source: Gartner press release (pdf, Japanese)

Can basic phones in Japan count as mid-range in US?

Credit: IT Media
KDDI au announced it would sell Sanyo's three basic handsets, starting in late February. Those are the A5518SA, "Sweets pure", and "Junior" A5520SA. All three models are running on a slower CDMA2000 1x network and supposed to be entry-level phones in Japan. But from the US perspective, they spot at minimum a mid-range set of functionality and features, when compared to basic phones rolled out in the United States. Judge for yourself. The common features for all three models include:

• 1.3MP built-in cameras
• QVGA main displays of 2.2 inch size
• 18MB of user accessible memory
• Infra-Red ports
• GPS navigation
• Bar code scanners (two-dimensional QR-code)
• Address book for 1,000 entries
• Push-to-Talk compatibility

Besides, the A5518SA model features miniSD memory slot, built-in FM radio, Email folder with 1MB memory allocated.