Best-selling smartphone in Japan 2023, by model

Japanese consumers showed a clear preference for iPhones in July 2023. iPhones occupied three out of the five top spots in the smartphone model sales ranking in Japan, led by the iPhone 13 with a sales share of 26 percent. The Google Pixel 7a and 6a were the only smartphones placed in the ranking that were not produced by Apple.

Smartphones in Japan

Since Japan - as one of the first countries worldwide - introduced smartphones in 1999, the share of smartphone users has grown: today, more than two thirds of the population in Japan own a smartphone. A recent survey found that smartphones are the main device to access the internet. Japanese smartphone makers, however, have not benefitted from this growth. While Japanese consumers for a long time preferred highly advanced domestic brands for mobile phones, such as Sony, Panasonic, and Sharp, these brands do not seem to be able to compete against Apple when it comes to smartphones.

iPhones convincing Japanese consumers

When the iPhone initially hit the Japanese market in the form of the iPhone 3G in 2008, SoftBank Corp., one of Japan's major mobile carriers, secured exclusive rights and contributed to its success by implementing bold pricing and smart marketing campaigns. After overcoming skepticism among Japanese consumers who were unfamiliar with the newly introduced systems, iPhones began to dominate sales in the Japanese smartphone market. The popularity of the brand in the country was amplified when other major mobile carriers provided iPhones together with their own mobile networks, including KDDI in 2011 and NTT Docomo in 2013.