While Apple’s launch of their iOS products in China recently didn’t exactly receive the same amount of furor their previous releases had, we guess the Cupertino company can still take solace in knowing that over in Japan, Apple remains the most popular mobile device, trumping not just Samsung, but local manufacturers at the same time. This was revealed in a recent set of shipping numbers released by IDC, whereby they reported that about a quarter of all smartphones shipped to Japan were iPhones, followed by Fujitsu at 23.5%, and amazingly only 9.5% of which belonged to Samsung, suggesting a pretty wide gap between Apple and Samsung’s popularity.
Of course it should be noted that shipping numbers does not necessarily translate into sales – after all Apple could only sell 10% of their shipment, while Samsung sells all of theirs, although IDC analyst Michito Kimura did state that sales of Apple devices remained strong. It has also been suggested that Samsung could be facing challenges further down the line as Japanese carrier NTT DoCoMo is considering if they should enter a deal with Apple to offer the iPhone. If you recall not too long ago, the carrier blamed the loss of subscribers on the iPhone as subscribers switched to carriers that offered the product.
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