The iPhone took a dominant market share of 44.9%. The issue going forward is stable supply.

The “iPhone 3G” (iPhone) took top units sold share two days after its launch. The iPhone shipped from Softbank Mobile on July 11th. It created a big sensation in many parts of Japan. This excitement even appears in our data. According to “BCN Ranking” on July 11th, the iPhone took 44.9% of unit sold share, which was the total share for both the 16GB and 8GB models. Even if it was only for one day, double digit share is very remarkable in the Japanese mobile phone market.

The best selling mobile phone on July 11th was the iPhone 16GB model with 36.8% share. In second place was the 8GB iPhone model with 8.1% share. Most Apple fans preferred to buy the premium model. On July 12th, the iPhone’s share plunged due to the lack of stock. However, the 16GB model still had the top sales share with 10.3%. The “W61CA”, which is the mobile phone of “au” made by Casio slid into second place with 5.6% share, and the 8GB iPhone remained in third place.

The iPhone also influenced the units sold share of each mobile phone company. On July 11th, Softbank took a market majority of 51.6% share. However, their shares declined to 27.7% the next day. The sold out inventory may be the reason for this decline, and now most mobile phone stores say they are accepting reservations but the in-stock date is undecided. Looking at the units sold data for June, the share of NTT Docomo was 52.5%, au was 32.8%, and Softbank was 13.8%. The iPhone has the ability to increase the shares of Softbank, but the present problem is its supplying power. (Original Text by Ichiro Michikoshi)