Android’s share of Japan’s domestic smartphone market is climbing. According to a survey of 34,838 people conducted by MMD Labo in early August, Android reached 54.1%, up 3.3 points since February, while iPhone fell 3.4 points to 45.6%. The shift is believed to be linked to iPhone price hikes, and on the Android side, Google Pixel has grown from 2.1% in 2021 to 9.5%, now sitting in second place by share. On 5ch, the numbers sparked debate over whether the price hikes are really to blame, or whether it’s carriers flooding the market with cut-price Android devices — with the conversation ranging from market analysis to war stories about where phones are made and everyone’s cracked-screen mishaps.
In Japan’s domestic smartphone market, Google’s Android operating system reached a 54.1% share as of August, up 3.3 points from the February survey. Apple’s iPhone fell 3.4 points to 45.6%. iPhone price hikes may have driven consumers away.
MMD Labo (Chuo-ku, Tokyo), a research firm covering the telecom industry, published its smartphone OS survey on the 17th. In early August, it surveyed men and women aged 18 to 79 about which device they own, receiving responses from 34,838 people.
Among Android devices, Google’s “Google Pixel” series gained the most share. This survey put it at 9.5%, up from 2.1% in November 2021. By brand, it now ranks second, behind Sharp’s AQUOS.
Source: nikkei.com / Original article here
Been a Sony loyalist for 14 years though.
That must've been rough.
Xperia was good, but the screen got lines in it twice.
Same, I went from the 1 II to the 10a.
Was shocked how bulky and heavy it is.
Maybe hoping some guy will buy them a new one…
They get a guy to buy them a new one, then pawn it.
If that were the reason, then the low-spec Androids being handed out for ¥1 outright should be taking the share instead — doesn't add up.
Not totally sure, but maybe it's because SoftBank (mockingly nicknamed "Zofuban") was practically giving them away for free?
Apple's always been a premium-price maker — you'd think they'd have seen the price-hike risk coming.
Isn't it also because in the early Android days, manufacturers crammed phones full of bloatware and made them sluggish?
AQUOS (Hon Hai/Foxconn)
Arrows (Lenovo)
Motorola (Lenovo)
Oppo (China)
Xiaomi (China)
Xperia (Japan)
GALAXY (Korea)
It's basically all Chinese makers now 😭
Where's Google's made, then?
I bet Tokyo residents have a high Android rate.
Just saying, if you go out to the countryside, Android plus a budget carrier means no signal.
Budget carriers are just MVNOs riding on the big three's networks, right?
Process of elimination, that only leaves Rakuten with its own network.
I don't quite follow.
First I'm hearing this — does iPhone use its own dedicated network or something?
If iPhone and Android support the same frequency bands, the signal strength is the same.
And pretty much every phone sold today supports roughly the same bands anyway.
Didn't you know? Most household intercoms in Japan are made by "Aiphone" (a real Japanese intercom manufacturer, often confused with iPhone).
Reassuringly made in China.
You don't need security software.
Easy for old folks to use.
If they don't get something, they can just ask their kids or grandkids and it's solved instantly.
Those "Raku-Raku" (easy-use) senior phones especially are genuinely unusable garbage.
A ton of old folks get talked into a Raku-Raku phone, find it unusable, and switch to iPhone anyway.
Don't turn into a smartphone addict.
People carry them out in public just to flex on others.
Honestly, calls, email, and a bit of internet browsing is all you really need.
I'd guess not many families are willing to shell out for a Pro or above.
A regular model or the "e" model seems more realistic.
Replacing it every 2 years is cheap enough for now,
but this time the regular model's release got pushed back, so I'm curious what people are doing —
waiting six months, or just going with last year's model?
Just switch to a used Android yourself.
Actually, do you even need a personal phone once you've got a family to support?
I'd just buy it for her.
Glad I've got three boys — if I had a daughter I'd probably spoil her rotten.
I'd probably lose my mind the moment she got a boyfriend.
Doesn't Android 15 ("doro" 15) not have a close-all option either?
Task button (■) → "Clear all."
◁ ◯ □ — those are handy, right?
Ah, you mean closing all app instances at once,
yeah.
I was picturing something like SuperFreeze,
wiping out every running app in one shot.
Apple: "We don't bother with poor people."
iPhone = rich
Android = poor
Being stingy about something you use every day is what poor people do.
Same with cars — you use them almost daily, so you shouldn't skimp on them either.
But honestly, if you're not attached to iPhone specifically, last year's GALAXY models are under ¥100,000 now, so that works fine.
The display and camera are basically equivalent anyway.
Background and Key Points of This Discussion
It’s worth noting that the MMD Labo survey asked 34,838 men and women aged 18 to 79 which device they currently own — it’s not a shipment-based statistic. Google Pixel grew from 2.1% in November 2021 to 9.5%, putting it in second place domestically behind AQUOS. Opinions in the thread split over how to interpret “why Android grew”: some pointed to carriers handing out cut-price devices, while others blamed the iPhone’s own price hikes. There was also pushback against the simplistic “cheap means it’s for poor people” framing, with some arguing that since carrier frequency bands are now largely standardized, there’s essentially no real difference in signal quality — highlighting a gap between the thread’s folk theories and the actual technical situation. The article itself doesn’t specify the concrete reasons behind the price hikes (exchange rates, component costs, etc.), so this piece doesn’t make any definitive claims on that either.
*This article is compiled from excerpts and a summary of the 5channel (News Express+) thread “[Domestic Smartphone Market] Android Share Climbs to 54% — Are Price Hikes Driving Users Away from iPhone?.”
